


Anamnesis

by bonjourd



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Anxiety, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Codependency, Depression, Drug Use, M/M, Old Age, Self-Reflection, Temporary Amnesia, good people making poor decisions, mild weight gain / brief body dysphoria, old idiots in love, trucker steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:27:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 48,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28536612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonjourd/pseuds/bonjourd
Summary: It's the end of the world and Steve can't quite remember how he got there. And where the hell is Bucky?Captain America, retired, drives a semi truck across a frozen wasteland.Captain America Chavez, tired, has a bad feeling about this space shuttle launch.
Relationships: America Chavez & Monica Rambeau, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 14
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> “How time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them.”
> 
> \-- Julian Barnes, _The Sense of an Ending_

"What happened was a gross violation of America's homeland security. Sergeant Barnes admits this in his own sane words, and I’m not here to convince you of his innocence. Our solemn responsibility is to listen to the evidence and review these awful accounts. It’s a sad task for all of us. Have the crimes of espionage and treason been established? You’ve heard testimony from--”

“желаниe. pжавый.”

"Silence in the gallery."

"семнадцать--”

Steve paused the courtroom recording before it zoomed in on retired Colonel Helmut Zemo. The private jet was descending, and he tucked away his Stark Tech phone. He knew what happened next; it was a scene replayed over and over. He'd memorized every twist he should've accounted for, every missed oversight. Steve pushed up the shade on his window and watched the Raft rise strange and ominous from the sea, gulls wheeling in the afternoon sun. Deprogramming was taking two long years. It could’ve been worse, they said. The public was afraid. They needed a scapegoat. His own reputation was in tatters if the press was anything to go by, but Bucky was alive.

That was what mattered, Steve thought, as he navigated security and asinine fake pleasantries and dick-measuring chit-chat with this month’s Raft personnel, his jaw perpetually clenched.

He trailed behind a nameless black ops recruit, some young buzz cut with a Texan drawl. The visitation cell with its triple-thick shatterproof glass centered on a single empty plastic chair. Steve took a breath.

“Hey, Buck.”

The man sitting in the corner tucked his left shoulder into the far wall. His knees hugged his chest, protecting his vitals. Dark zigzags of stitches scarred his shaved head, and he brushed a hand over them. “You shouldn’t have come.”

Steve exhaled. “Was in the neighborhood,” he lied.

Bucky scoffed. His cheekbones were less gaunt. “Still a shit liar.”

Steve half-smiled and mentally scrolled through a number of innocuous topics thought up in the weeks between his last visit, discarding them out of hand. Bucky would tolerate nostalgic childhood yarns, go silent when it came to the war and Hydra, and lapse into a maddeningly cynical attitude at the mention of his psych evals. Behind the shatterproof glass there was a fortress. Steve might scream if he had to play through the same performative charade again. Not this month. Not after he'd buried Peggy, shoveled dirt on her coffin. He _should_ scream; maybe they'd commit him, too. He clasped his hands in front of him, rubbing the faint callouses from the shield.

“The UN subcommittee agreed to review your appeal.”

“I didn’t ask for a fucking appeal,” Bucky snapped, all sharp angles.

Steve chewed the inside of his cheek. “I know. You deserve another chance, even if--”

“Don’t tell me what I deserve. You read the files.”

“Even if you don’t believe that yet,” Steve finished stubbornly, because he always had to push, push, push. Start the fight, ignite a spark. If he clenched his jaw any tighter he might chip a molar.

“Why don’t you get out of here?” Bucky shot back, eyes wide and blazing. The orange jumper’s mended left sleeve revealed a metal socket. His remaining hand clutched white-knuckled at his kneecap as he launched himself up, uncurling like a snake. The Raft escort shifted in silent warning behind Steve, as if Steve wouldn't crush his skull if he so much as touched Bucky's sock. “Forget all this misery. Go live your life in the sunlight.”

Steve swallowed and crossed his arms so no one could see his hands shake. “Can't do that.”

Bucky's words puffed little fogged patches on the reinforced glass. “I’m not your friend, get that through your Captain America helmet, alright? That guy’s been dead a long time.”

It stung. It was exhilaratingly real, like a sharp crack from taking it on the jaw. Bucky had always been a good boxer.

“Then from one soldier to another, I’m not leaving you here.”

“Fuck you.” Bucky's mouth twisted into a nasty visage. “I dug my own grave, you don’t gotta lie in it with me.”

“Last I checked both our graves were empty,” Steve retorted with the same heat. When they put Peggy six feet under, all he wanted to do was sleep. Rest. But someone was still roaming the earth with Bucky's face and Bucky's past, god damn him.

The man with Bucky's face now held him captive under a withering stare, reading Steve like an especially confounding book. Was he still a skinny kid from Brooklyn? Captain America: government puppet? An exasperating stranger? Steve suspected he was something worse; that he was close to going off the rails.

“Walk away, Steve.”

It was an easy hit to parry. “Not without you.”

***

Steve blinked in the weak fluorescent lighting and peered again at the photograph taped to the bare wall beside his cot. His naked feet curled against the frigid floor and he rubbed his arms absently, dry skin catching on thick sweater wool.

It was a candid yellowed photo of two men on the Brooklyn Bridge walkway. The sun lit a younger version of himself in a plain t-shirt tugged by the wind. His companion's face was shy under a ballcap, one jacketed arm hooked confidently around a bridge cable. Scrawled in the margin, a clue:

_Back before you know it -- Bucky_

"Bucky," he said aloud to the photo, the syllables warming deep in his chest. And it was, unmistakably. His metal left hand was tucked into a glove and brown hair spilled beneath the cap. It must’ve been …

Hm. Steve tapped a finger. The train of thought faded, his recollection straining and failing. He picked up his little worn notebook from the bedside and thumbed to the dog-eared page.

The prior pages held his precious collection of notes, dates, times. It threatened a headache, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. One of the lightbulbs buzzed low and insistent. A glance at his watch showed five 'till. He tossed the notebook aside and heaved himself from the cot, wincing at the twinge in his left knee as the tendons complained. Slept on it wrong. An unpleasant unfamiliarity with his own body tickled the back of his neck, not unlike those fresh few months after the Vita-Ray, and he registered a series of mismatches. He was heavier, for one. Yet his clothes fit him fine and the unshaven reflection in the square shaving mirror was distinctly him, just a decade older than his face in the photograph. The world was different now (again), why wouldn’t he be different too (again)?

The silent motions of morning routine allowed space to recall his current context, like methodically outlining an elephant in the dark with a flashlight. He settled into a time and place, partially filling his empty vessel as he brushed his teeth and combed his hair in the spartan bunk room. The plastic wash basin filled with suds and he dumped it down the toilet chute.

A knock at the door: "Good morning, gorgeous!"

Steve opened it with a distracted kick and pulled a pair of boot socks from his crooked chest of drawers. A quadruped android resembling an abstract minimalist sketch of a dog entered and rose to bipedal height at Steve's shoulder. The head unit's vision system was stamped B.I.T.S., Stark logo obvious.

"The year is 1812, we hail Emperor Napoleon--"

"You try this every morning." He flung his coveralls on the bed and bent to retrieve his boots.

"Hope springs eternal."

"Just give me the status report."

"I can tell you haven't had your shitty coffee yet."

"BITS. Status report."

The android folded down with a petulant whir. "Clear skies and a practically balmy thirty below. Radioactivity level orange thanks to winds from the northwest. You've got Route 3, 40 and 695; loading dock at oh nine hundred. Schedule's already on the Big Board because Sharon's been up since four with her obsessive compulsions."

Steve laced his boots then zipped the insulated coveralls over his long johns and sweater, nodding at this information. Those routes he could drive blind. Figure ten hours on the road if the weather held. He grabbed his notebook as the android idly played a Frosty the Snowman jingle. Outside his bunk room, the concrete hallway was lit with the same weak yellow bulbs and he rubbed his eyes in the doorway.

A woman rounded the corner and intercepted him, shoving a thermos into his hands. "Morning, Rogers. Oatmeal's in the pantry, it was hot five minutes ago. Let's go. BITS, turn that crap off." She whisked them both up in her wake.

The pantry was another unremarkable concrete room. A lemon-soap scent lingered. Steve took a spoonful of oatmeal from a plastic bowl and set down the thermos, its SHIELD insignia worn away. The woman busied herself at a laptop on the corner linoleum counter, plugged in next to a half-rusted hot plate. Her brow was weathered into a permanently concerned vee above the nose and her gray hair wove into a braid that brushed the collar of her turtleneck, tucked into equally thick coveralls. The constant wind gave her a high blush like a glow.

"Morning, Carter."

She shot him a wry smile. "Lucky me, a man who knows my name at the breakfast table."

He allowed a chuckle. The oatmeal was bland, the coffee bitter. It was hard to believe it had ever been otherwise. BITS snatched his empty bowl and thermos into a bucket of soapy water filled with a collection of dishware from the crew's earlier breakfasts. Steve tapped a finger on the table as he stalled, then checked his watch: almost oh nine hundred. Right, the loading dock.

"Tell me your routes," Sharon said, clicking away at the computer.

"Three, 40, 695."

She nodded once. "Good. Let's get you on the road. BITS, you set to run diagnostics?"

"Oh, of course, it's an honor to be included in conversation this morning, Captain," BITS muttered, one appendage rinsing a pot.

"Too early for the sarcasm. Don’t make me retool your algorithms."

“An empty threat, you could never.”

Steve joined Sharon by the lift to pull on their standard-issue parkas, knit hats and gloves. Their clattering ride up to the loading dock was brief, dim, and reeked of gasoline.

The lift doors opened like a sunrise.

The bright, vast space of the loading dock housed four eighteen-wheeled giants and their attendant equipment. Crane machinery dangled from the rafters, meant for maneuvering the shipping containers of precious cargo from the surplus sublevel beneath them. A mechanic hooked up a hose into a tanker marked with a red flammable sigil, and the adjoining snowmobile garage was a hive of activity. Wind rattled the huge frosted-over windows, mixing with the whine of drills and pump motors.

Sharon grabbed a pair of spare ski goggles from the snowmobile helmet cubbies and went to a locker labeled CARTER, next to BARNES. BITS trotted to a faded red cab with snow-dusted chrome finish and unfolded to lift the engine hood forward, its grille swinging down like teeth to prey. Two of the four trailers, including the red cab, were loaded with shipping containers, and their respective plow attachments waited against the trailer bed for service. A white-washed wall dominated the head of the floor: the Big Board.

The small frustrations and incompletenesses of his morning melted into familiar certainty. Steve pulled out his notebook and carefully copied his portion of the schedule. Weinstauber, Suburban Appliance Fairbanks, Pierre. With each proper noun a place rose in mental association, the routes connecting a path between the dots. It was glorious, magical.

Two other crew in matching parkas were bent over a workbench in conversation. One of them raised a hand. "Morning, Captain Carter."

"Morales," Sharon called and paused her Big Board update. "Your last route on Earth, try not to pop a flat. Got some Jim Beam waiting for after."

"Can't take that on the shuttle."

"Guess you better enjoy it all here then."

"Wilson says hangovers are worse in orbit."

She waved him off. "Yeah, well, Wilson says a lot of things."

"GPS is still shitting itself," BITS announced irritably from the engine innards, one appendage ported to the system.

Steve frowned and scrubbed crusted snow from the headlights. "Any replacement units?"

"We barely got a working Mr. Coffee, you think I got a replacement GPS?" The android pushed the hood shut and fetched a plow attachment. The giant plow dwarfed the android but BITS handled it deftly, another appendage bolting it into position. "Unless you or some poor fuck wants to go ice fishing at the nearest subterranean Best Buy."

"Can't you upgrade him? More cheerful?" Morales gestured as he passed by.

"No one is upgrading me except me!"

Steve crouched to check the back tires and their snow chains, and wondered when his knee would stop hurting like a sonofabitch. The serum was slowing down, that much was clear. It used to be he could recover overnight. Like after the helicarrier, sure. But that was years ago, he'd been in plenty of scrapes since then. Right? Nothing particular came to mind, which was patently absurd. He levered his weight against the tire treads as he straightened. Just focus on the job. Check the trailer fastenings on the container, triple-locked, cables tight. He circled to the cab and pressed his thumb to the grease-stained keypad.

AUTHORIZED: STEVEN G. ROGERS

It was like sitting down in a favorite chair, the cushion long-worn. His vintage alarm clock sat on the dash, CHECK-IN CHANNEL 19 inked across the bottom. The CB radio above the windshield had one switch taped over in red: emergencies only. His compass hung from the rear-view mirror like a totem artifact. It hadn't pointed north since… Well, a long time. Back before the Earth's magnetic poles went haywire. Peggy's photo was cracking at the edges, a memory so impossibly far removed from the present that it verged on fiction. It was a blessing she hadn't lived to see the end. He adjusted the mirrors and looked to his right. In the passenger seat rested the old shield, half-scorched and a nick along the edge. He smoothed a hand down its face. The United States of America remained in name only. The collapse of Hydra and SHIELD had been the first domino in a long line of them. Coincidence, bad luck, self-destruction, fate, call it what you wanted. His thoughts trailed off and he was left blinking at the blackened star. Christ, did he need another coffee?

He checked the glove compartment. Copies of registration and permits, as if the Security Council would actually be patrolling out there. Sorely outdated and creased paper maps. One Glock, fully loaded. Music CDs salvaged from another era. A square plastic box with little pills in segmented sections, organized by day. The taped scrap of a note over the lid read: STEVE — 1 PILL / 24 HRS. It was his own handwriting. There were five remaining. He verified the date in his notebook. Now four remained. Was he supposed to get a refill? It wasn't helping his knee. Steve shoved the box away and fished out his scratched pair of aviator sunglasses as Sharon rapped on the driver's door.

She passed a weather-proofed tablet up to him. The double-lion Security Council logo on its cover matched the design on their parkas and truck cabs. "You know what this is?"

"Delivery validations, yeah, I know. I can do my job," he added testily. All these little quizzes.

"Just due diligence," she replied. "BITS put your suit in there too." She nodded to the passenger seat, where a white and blue packet was tucked under the shield.

"I don't need the suit."

Sharon arched an eyebrow and gave him a pointed once-over. "Due diligence," she repeated, and jumped down from the rim step.

Steve made a noise that was definitely not a harrumph and scrolled through the tablet, cross-checking names with the Big Board and his own notepad, adding notation for scheduled check-ins. Behind the truck an alarm buzzed once, twice, three times. Gears ground as they struggled to slide the massive garage door along its iced track, the wind picking up ferociously.

He hit the engine ignition button and the truck rumbled to life with a thick cough. Orange needles on the dashboard gauges jumped and settled. Check the voltage, fuel tank, air pressure. A refurbished digital readout showed the auxiliary power unit at 85%. Years of rough travel had chipped its casing and without suitable spare parts it, like everything else, was slowly breaking down. Steve checked the seal on the windows and cranked up the heat. Marvin Gaye crooned on low volume. He fastened the seat belt across his parka and coveralls because the ice could get a little unpredictable. Snowflakes fluttered in and melted fast on the windshield. By the Big Board, Sharon pulled down her ski goggles, framed by parka fur and unmoved against the gusts. She raised one hand in farewell, returned with a thumbs-up.

"Nomad, you read me?" said a voice over the CB radio; Morales, from an adjacent truck.

Steve reached up and unhooked his mic from its cradle. "Loud and clear, Spider."

"Happy trails, elders first."

Steve rolled his eyes, put on his sunglasses, and shifted into reverse with one pull on the horn.

Nice weather meant no blizzards and no ice storms. It was never truly nice anymore. The clouds hung low and overcast, a gray layer nevertheless bright enough to reflect light up from the permafrost tundra. Hazy smoke on the eastern horizon obscured where he knew skyscraper skeletons reared at the sky, like so many sticks planted in the snow. Opposite was a half-buried river of signs and tangled wires that stretched to the mountains, which is where anyone who survived and wanted to continue surviving fled, before the shuttles began. Whenever that had been. He'd survived. Had he fled? It was blank.

He turned the big rig westward, started the alarm clock on the dash, and settled in.

Except he didn't settle in. An hour later on the unchanging vast tundra and there was an itch, a piece missing yet unknowable. Marvin Gaye had crooned his last song a couple miles back, and the cab filled only with the engine's muted rumblings. Too quiet. He pushed the scan button on the CB and listened as it fluttered from station to station. Most leftover people had radios, needed them as a lifeline. The antennae searched for a connection. It came up empty and restarted over again every few minutes.

He passed the twisted wreckage of a high-voltage transmission tower and his mind wandered around to the photograph. He should've asked Sharon. Where was Bucky? Was he still alive? Was he coming back? If he didn't remember to care, did he care at all? The notion made him sick, like someone had punched him in the gut and again in the nose. Had it been like this for Bucky, those first months after the helicarrier? Steve had been different, then, too. None of this grasping after memories and mundane frustrations. They'd dragged the Potomac (he wasn't in the fucking river, he was out there) and put Bucky's face all over the evening news and social media and in the end he'd just shown up in Steve's living room, in the same chair he'd shot Fury. _Do you know who I am?_

But that was ages ago.

Steve knew he'd lost time. Handfuls of it, scooped out at random. There were people he should be mourning. They slipped away from him like wisps of cloud on the wind. He knew Sharon and BITS and the Albany Outpost and this job, the frozen roads, the things that were right in front of him. Bucky was a ghost. And if Bucky was a ghost, then so was Steve. That was how it always went.

"And she left him!" The CB burst forth in a rush of static and startled him from reverie. "I told Dan I didn't believe any of that--"

Local traffic. Steve wiped a hand over his mouth, down his beard. A half-buried green highway sign marked the upcoming exit. The mountains had grown steadily closer with their patches of stunted pine and long-dead lumber.

He slowed and maneuvered the wide turn, dropping the plow to confront the next three miles or so until his first stop. The back roads were riddled with debris, plastic waste and bizarre souvenirs of far-flung suburbia that resurfaced in storms, mostly picked-over by scavengers. If you wanted a delivery you had one obligation: Maintain your access road. He'd gotten stuck in drifts on a few early routes and, well, that's why super-strength was a valuable driver attribute. Frigid temps and high radiation meant any prolonged exposure was deadly serious. Steve gripped the steering wheel tighter.

He eased up to the barbed-wire fencing of the Weinstauber homestead and idled. The third story of a former office building was visible above the snow pack. He waved once. After a few minutes, a trio of people bundled in ragtag furs emerged from around the back with a sled. Steve exchanged his sunglasses for goggles, pulled down his hat, and zipped up the parka. He grabbed the battered tablet and lurched from the warm cab into the brutal frosted air.

The trailer rear opened with a frozen squeal. Inside were tens of pallets of food, recharged batteries, medicine. Those in the front were marked with a W. Taking more than the scheduled allotment was punishable by excommunication, which more often than not meant death. Those who chose to stay had to acknowledge the rules and the consequences. Eli Weinstauber and his neighbors had chosen to stay, and Steve doubted nothing short of the actual breaking apart of the Earth itself would move them. His mother, father, uncle, two sons and one daughter were all buried on the property; casualties of old age, unfortunate accidents, and the present circumstances. And how was it Steve succinctly recalled this, the sad lineage of relative strangers, instead of the last time he'd seen Bucky's face, or why he was living with Sharon, or how he'd gotten this way in the first place? It was maddening.

Steve handed over the tablet for signature and a thumbprint, and stacked the designated pallets onto the sled, their combined weight denting the permafrost. Slivers of his exposed skin were already chapped. Quick work meant less frostbite to heal.

"You delivering surplus next Thursday?" one of the bundled-up people asked through their layers. Out in this cold everyone was faceless, sexless.

Steve shrugged. "I don't make the schedule."

"Weather's starting to turn, looks like. Here. For the road."

A casual salute and then a plastic baggie of … Steve did a double-take. Jerky?

Back to the highway.

The CB radio scanned forlornly. He checked in with Sharon at the assigned time, and reset the alarm clock.

He savored the last of the stringy old squirrel jerky as the dented Suburban Appliance sign came into view. The associated warehouse was retrofitted with an array of gadgets and new-old tech clearly plundered from military connections. It was the largest delivery drop on this route, an amalgamation of extended families. Different folks found different reasons for staying behind. The Suburban Appliance commune was aggressively optimistic: when the winter receded, they would be here first, and governed themselves accordingly.

He guided the rig to their de-iced lot and hesitated longer than necessary in leaving the cab. It wasn't a stop he enjoyed.

"Captain America!" hailed an anonymous figure in outerwear. Four others swarmed him at the rear of the truck, rifles hanging off their backs.

"Sign for validation," Steve muttered through his parka fur, shoving the tablet forward.

"God bless us all, Captain America has arrived with the goods to save the day!" The homesteader continued in a tone reminiscent of the old USO shows.

Steve ignored it and unloaded all but five pallets of remaining cargo from the cavernous shipment container, his breath mingling with the others’ in suspended condensation.

"And a gallon of fuel."

He stopped and huffed a fresh cloud. He'd left the handgun in the glovebox and the shield up front. "What?"

"A gallon of diesel for your prescription refill." The homesteader was serious.

Fuck. "Show me."

They pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. There it was, plain as day, his signature on a crude trade contract. Diesel once a month for something called dediscozipine. His knee throbbed. There was more than enough fuel in the rig for him to return to the outpost, not to mention the auxiliary power.

"Siphon it," Steve capitulated gruffly, and caught the pill bottle tossed his direction. Why the hell was he bartering out here instead of through Sharon? Then again, he avoided medical bays as a general rule.

Back in the cab, he portioned out the capsules and relabeled the dates.

One more stop.

The Pierre homestead was furthest into the mountains, the last reachable delivery drop for rigs. Any further venturing into the woods necessitated a snowmobile or bulldozer plow, and even then it was touch-and-go. Avalanches ripped dead forests up clean from their roots, crashing into massive snarled tangles that rendered former mountain roads impassable.

Steve frowned. The snow blew soft across the highway exit, drifted since the last storm. Failed maintenance usually spelled trouble. It was a winding ramp. He idled, debating, letting the radio click through another scan of empty channels. Number one rule was don't leave the truck. Especially not this far from the outpost. Well, better to try and push through on a clear day. He shifted into gear, flipped the off road and power divider lock switches on the dash, and nosed the rig down the exit to the connector road, feathering the brakes. The path snaked between foothills in a shallow valley, fallen limbs blown across the cleared roadway. The plow handled them easily even as Steve's trepidation grew.

The Pierre homestead was a squat collection of cabins behind a standard razor-wire fence. Here the terrain played a greater defensive advantage. Steve waited at the gate, knee jogging restlessly in the cab. No one appeared. Not good, not good. He pulled the horn in a single loud blast that sent a flock of crows spiraling into the sky with insulted screeches. Still no movement. No chimney smoke, either. He preemptively cut the alarm for check-in and grabbed the radio mic, tuning to channel 19.

"Break one nine. Nomad to Albany Outpost."

Sharon clipped back immediately. "This is Albany. Nomad, you're early."

"Pierre homestead's quiet. I'm gonna check it out."

"Raid?"

Steve scanned the perimeter. "Nothing obvious."

"Wear the suit."

"I don't need the suit. It'll just be a minute."

“I'll give you ten,” she warned.

The truck engine cut off and every movement seemed enormously loud in the ensuing silence. Steve exchanged his sunglasses for ski goggles and a scarf his over his lips and nose. He checked the handgun from the glovebox and shoved it into his parka. Then he grabbed the shield, because some things were more effective than firepower. His boots slipped a little off the side of the road as he leapt down, and he dug around for the spikes he kept under the driver's seat. He already felt like a sitting duck, and he stopped to check the perimeter again. No signs of life, not even crows.

The shield shoved through the gate after a protest from twisted, barbed steel wire. His boots crunched into iced-over snow. If there were footprints earlier, they'd been erased by the latest snowstorm.

"Hello?" he called out. "Captain Rogers, Albany Outpost."

He peered in a front window of the first cabin. Deserted. Everything seemed in order. He tested the doorknob -- locked. The neighboring cabin was the same.

The third cabin was a nightmare.

"Ah, shit," Steve breathed, and pushed through the door. A dozen frozen bodies in such relaxed repose it could've been a cheap wax museum setup. He took stock of the setting. No violence. There was a decently-sized woodpile next to the fireplace, and he'd passed a larger shed out front. A quick check up the chimney confirmed the flue was open. His boot spikes clicked across the floor as he approached the dining table. The scrappy remains of a dinner had frozen before three people dead in their seats, and he picked up one of their empty glass bottles. Steve wrinkled his nose at the potent odor of moonshine. He examined the bottle closer; no identifying marks. Either someone had fixed up a still on the homestead or was running a trader side gig. Bad batch.

He rubbed the hat pulled low on his forehead and considered the bodies. Better to leave them here. The ground was far too frozen for a burial, and trucking them back to Albany was pointless. Steve sighed and the condensation gathered in his beard before frosting over.

He checked the last two cabins, also empty. One hell of a party. Heading to the truck there was a frazzled buzzing noise -- the CB radio. He stomped the excess snow from his boot spikes and slid across the cab seat, dumping the shield.

"Albany to Nomad, come in, repeat--"

"This is Nomad."

"Report?” Sharon asked, relief tangible.

"All dead, accidental. Bootleg liquor.”

"Jesus.”

“Unmarked bottles, maybe not so accidental.” Steve pulled off his goggles and wiped his nose on his sleeve. There was time he would've said some words, made a cairn in remembrance, but he had a schedule to keep and dead bodies were as common as the snow they rested in.

“I’ll log it. You headed back?"

Steve rubbed his eyes, weary. "Copy that, signing off."

The truck engine's noise broke the silence that hung over the cabins. Staying this long in one place wasn't ideal, and he needed to get moving. There was barely enough cleared road to execute a turn without running adrift. Steve cursed under his breath and checked his position. The rig nosed forward in low gear, plow brushing the barbed fencing as he straightened the wheel alignment, then shifted into reverse. He watched his mirrors and worked the rig around one foot at a time until he could ease out.

It was slow going uphill, tracing the path the plow had cleared earlier. The shadows lengthened. He was at the final turn before the highway straightaway when it happened. The left side back tires hit a slick spot and the trailer took a slow, aborted jack knife into the debris-filled ditch, nothing to be done. Steve straightened out the steering, and went out to inspect the damage. This close to evening the wind was picking up, and he almost mistook the sound in the distance for a gust blowing through tree limbs. It wavered in and out of clarity until, carried on a singular burst of wind, the buzz of snowmobiles was unmistakable.

Scavengers.

Steve worked quickly, jamming his boot spikes into the slick snow and grabbing the low right corner of the crooked trailer bed that was clear of the ditch. He sent up a short prayer of thanks that the damn thing wasn’t fully loaded, then pulled. Slowly, gently, the trailer slid back into alignment. He hustled up to the cab, the truck now an obnoxiously loud target, and took a steady breath, tried the turn once more, gentle on the clutch. The tires caught, slipped, and caught as the buzz outside grew louder, resettled crows taking to flight. Adrenaline trickled in. Stay patient. If he took it too fast the trailer might skid again or he'd blow the differential, and that wasn't a scenario he was keen to face at the moment.

He maneuvered the cab around the turn and then it was a straight bit back to the highway. He let the odometer climb. Shift gears. Almost there. He passed the battered exit sign and braked, slowly, slowly, turn the wheel --

Steve grabbed the Glock from his side and took a shot out the driver's door, a single echoing _pop_.

A spit of ice and snow sprayed the white snowmobile that was crawling up the road. The scavenger heeded the warning and hung back.

They wouldn't trouble with an armed confrontation this late in the day, when the truck was near-empty. If they'd intercepted the comms, which was likely, they knew there was a far larger cache of gear at the homestead, and that Steve was the driver. Captain America didn't mean much to any survivors but it still made for a pause in risk assessments.

Steve opened the throttle and the truck rumbled eastward, exchanging mountains for the eastern haze of a smoldering city. He checked the rear view mirror. Six snowmobiles, the scavengers hunched and watchful as he left them behind.

Two more hours on the road meant another round of Marvin Gaye, several protein bars, and a freezing piss stop.

Evening threatened as he pulled into the outpost. Cutting it close. Sharon took his radiation reading and squeezed his shoulder. Hot soup for dinner and he sniffed his runny nose. BITS uploaded data from the delivery tablet. Morales and the rest of the crew, their names a blur, offered him a swig of whiskey. Steve thought of the homestead and declined, stomach clenching.

He knew the contours of his room and stripped silently in the dark. Notebook on the nightstand. The weariness was deep in his bones, stiff in his joints, stringing through the serum.

***

The overhead light sputtered on and he opened his eyes, focusing on his boots tidily stowed under a chair and coveralls draped less-than-tidily over the same chair. His watch showed five 'till. A photograph was taped to the wall by his cot. Himself, younger, with another man on the Brooklyn Bridge. It should've been familiar, well-loved. He read the note:

_Back before you know it -- Bucky_

Steve’s chest warmed, and he looked at the other man in the photo again. Bucky, that was right. Of course it was. When had they … He searched for context. After the helicarrier, after the Raft. His memory sputtered with confused images like a broken movie reel and instead brought a wave of melancholy, as often happened with irretrievable things.

He picked up his little worn notebook and thumbed to the dog-eared bookmark.


	2. Chapter 2

_Then_

Steve watched Bucky scan his new Avengers Tower apartment, still sharply dressed in a suit and a leather glove that concealed his metal hand. His hair had grown in enough to cover the remaining physical scars from deprogramming and give Steve sporadic fits of cognitive dissonance. It was a lot to take in at once, the UN security hearing barely behind them. Finally behind them.

"Better than the Raft," Bucky noted, testing the light switches. "Where do they keep you?"

"I live across the hall, in the east wing. If you need anything." He was acutely conscious of hovering and forced himself to adopt a faux-relaxed posture against the door frame. Bucky assessed the pantry space and sight lines from the living room, checked for bugs in the basic furnishings Pepper had kindly provided. Steve had added a few personal touches. Things the old Bucky liked (a vintage record player, vinyl swing albums, Maxwell House coffee), things he thought the new Bucky might like (a soft electric blanket, weight rack, and a meditative soy candle that Sam made him buy).

"Thanks," Bucky said, running his hand along the underside of the record player. It hurt because it rang hollow. He drew the blinds on the massive main window and Steve kicked himself for leaving them open.

"What is it? You can tell me, it's okay." Steve slouched and tried to reduce his ridiculous bulk, like if he handled Bucky too roughly in these vulnerable moments the tenuous reforging of their friendship would simply shatter apart, irreparable. _I’m not your friend._

"You don't see?" He unplugged the television from the wall. "It's a different prison. And that door needs better security."

"Buck--"

"Then tell me I can leave any time, no consequence." Bucky raised his eyebrows and looked pointedly at the red blinking surveillance light in the ceiling. "That wasn't the deal."

No, Steve had to admit, no, it was not. The UN subcommittee, under intense pressure from the new administration’s CIA director, had relented on a plea and agreed to release Bucky into US custody rather than pursue an extended Raft sentence. The Vienna Accords required public service parole, subject to continuous performance and behavioral oversight. Be a role model or else. That went for Steve, too. Goodbye, Brooklyn apartment. PR was an ongoing nightmare, as Tony reminded him daily.

"Out of the frying pan into the fire." Steve tried and failed to keep his tone light.

Bucky shook his head and thumbed absently at the waxen leaf of a fake plant. "There's no getting away for me. I've made peace with that. The Accords are bullshit though, you shouldn't have signed."

They could argue that point for days. Already had. Steve reached to gnaw at an older, different bone instead. "Why'd you come back, after the Triskelion fell?"

"You keep asking me that."

"You keep dodging."

Bucky picked up the soy candle, read the label (Let That Shit Go), and glanced at him once, twice, as if gauging his mood. "Not like I had a grand plan. Guess I just figured, might as well come home," he finished, more tenderly than Steve thought possible.

"I'm sorry we couldn't stay in Brooklyn."

Bucky quirked a smile and it was 1940 again, the years tilting vertiginous around them. "Home's more than a place, right?"

Oh. Steve swallowed, grateful. "Yeah, Buck."  
  


***

_  
Now_

America Chavez stretched out on the flight deck and scrolled the incoming simulator readouts on her tablet. The tablet's wiring trailed up to a multi-panel array of buttons, lights and switches that comprised the operational hub of Cleveland Outpost's shuttle. Her watch chimed the hour as the bland view from the deck's portholes grew dimmer. It was impossible to see past the cloud cover here on Earth, but she felt the ebb and flow of the system nonetheless. Mars and Saturn had entered unsettled conjunction. The tablet pinged: status report, all systems go. She re-initiated the simulator run and combed through the unruly mop of hair piled on her head, fingernails bitten down to the quick again. The readouts populated line by line.

"You're still stuck on it, aren't you," accused a voice behind her, where a bay of custom built-in freezers hummed. The outpost generator supplied protection for the most comprehensive seed bank left on Earth, soon to depart as Operation Hummingbird.

Chavez didn't answer right away and would've preferred to continue her methodical status checks, but the voice persisted.

"I know you are. You're never this anxious. Might as well have a little thundercloud over your head."

"I'm not anxious."

A long sigh. "We gotta figure it out eventually, Merry. It scares me too."

Chavez studied the HOTSHOT decorative script scrawled above the nav system panel. SHIELD’s space program recruited individuals who could survive the rigors of interstellar travel, individuals with particular abilities. Using those abilities was another story. They tended to reap unpredictable consequences, and using them out of scope was asking for trouble even if you were rock-solid sure of yourself, or thought you were. People, not power; work within your mission teams organically.

"You were _gone_ _,_ " Chavez said.

 _Ground me_ , Monica Rambeau had asked her, trusted her. But Chavez had lost focus, gotten too far in her own head. Freaked out. Till there was nothing left but pungent ozone. So, yeah, she was still stuck in those three agonizing minutes it took to power up the Van de Graff machine and pray Rambeau's theory would work, that the static charge would be a homing beacon where she had failed.

"What if next time you can't come back?" Chavez had locked the machine away in an outpost closet when they first landed for this mission.

Rambeau appeared above her, eyes large behind round glasses and her dark face framed by buzzed-close curls. Her tidy fleece sweats contrasted with Chavez's ripped layers of patched thermal spandex. Even at the Academy she'd been the one with freshly pressed shirts while Chavez gathered reprimands for holes in her khakis.

"What if next time isn't up to us?" Rambeau countered. At Chavez's silence she pursed her lips. _See?_ "The only thing that scares me more is having it out of control. You know deep space is different. We drop in at the wrong place and some quasar's right there? I'm not gonna play it safe in the backyard 'cause I'm too scared to hop the fence."

She returned to the freezers' temperature log monitors, leaving Chavez to frown at her reflection in the tablet's screen. Chavez let the conversation lapse rather than acknowledge the obvious, which was that Rambeau was right. If they didn't figure this out, their dreams for pushing further into the unknown, true outer space exploration, would stay dreams. That was how fear worked; something she'd gone a long time before encountering. She changed the topic like a small rock into a glass window.

"I want to read Barnes into the Cage op."

"Uh huh," Rambeau said flatly. "Now you're just testing me. We don't need him."

"You know what that place used to be?" Chavez closed the status report (all systems go) and sat up to unplug the connections.

"Yeah, I saw."

"He could be an asset."

"If he ever comes back from his latest flex time adventure. You and I both know his priorities aren't aligned."

"I'll talk to him."

"The Council should've never placed him here," Rambeau maintained, busy with a freezer's touchscreen. "He's too old-school for this shit."

Chavez smiled and powered down the cockpit's flight systems one switch at a time. "We’re both forty in Earth years."

"Forty is not the same as, what, one-twenty? And, you gained two on me during the Vega mission."

"That fucking moron Quill. Could've made it on schedule."

Chavez idly rubbed the thin necklace chain that tickled between her skin and spandex. Get shot beyond the solar system for a couple years, come to find Earth ended over a decade ago. The battle already fought and lost. She'd signed the waiver but the worst wasn't supposed to actually happen. There had been people here to protect Earth. And they'd failed, horribly. All that remained was the matter of clean-up shuttle evacs. Earth had never been the center of the universe, objectively, but now it was less than a dirty smudge in the interstellar theater. It was good for two things: dumping convicted criminals and making ice cubes.

"What would you've done if Earth was the same-old same-old when we got home?" Rambeau asked, intuiting her train of thought. Chavez joined her at the freezer bay and watched her careful fingers play along the screens.

"Go down to Del Mar on a summer day in a bikini--"

"Oh a bikini now?"

"--Catch the breeze off the Pacific. Definitely eat a hot dog, the ones they used to make on a charcoal grill. You?"

Rambeau shrugged. "Buy all those candies at the grocery checkout counter and rot my teeth." She engaged the freezer control locks and turned to Chavez. "Is it bad I don't miss it that much? Is that fucked up?"

"No, it's not fucked up."

"It wasn't the same, since my ma passed." Rambeau gazed out towards the portholes and Chavez waited for her to find the right words, their moments of vulnerability kept like pearls. "I think about laying in the grass under the old oaks down the road, when I was a kid. The sun would come through the leaves just so. How the cypress smelled after a humid summer rain. Those big magnolias she loved, god they were everywhere. That's what I miss. She'd like this mission, the seed bank, I think. And the other one, too. All that damn optimism.”

Chavez smiled. "You think--"

She stopped and listened hard. There it was again: an echoing clunk in the distance, beyond the shuttle. The outpost garage. She grabbed her parka from the flight deck and motioned to Rambeau.

"About fucking time."

Chavez was already out and down the connector tunnel, bypassing the garage into the subterranean maze of outpost corridors. So he'd made it by curfew after all. Barnes's bunk room door wasn’t completely closed, and she rapped her knuckles on it a moment before toeing it open. He stood in his coveralls before his workbench for cleaning knives and guns and his left arm and any other malfunctioning appliance in the outpost, which happened to be many. An old blender collected dust against a disemboweled heater. There was barely space for his cot.

"Barnes," she said sharply, and he turned, revealing a large boxy piece of equipment festooned with dials and meters. "What is it?"

He pulled off his hat and gloves and looked embarrassed for some reason, his left digits clicking together in what she recognized as a nervous tic. His hair and stubble were growing long again, and in his ragged mid-layer of clothes the metallic arm was the brightest thing about him. Barnes was a year overdue for official maintenance, Carter kept reminding her, but getting him in a medical bay was next to impossible.

“It’s a ham radio,” Rambeau said as she brushed by and placed a dark bare hand over the interface, intrigued.

"We already have a radio," Chavez pointed out. Blenders and space heaters were one thing, but comms equipment? The Council would have her confiscate it; one of the many rules in their door-stopper volume of regulations.

Barnes finally spoke: "Rambeau's right. Found it at the old truck stop."

She thought back to last week. "The place we shoveled into? You dragged this from there? We _have_ a radio."

"Personal project."

Rambeau looked up. "Cute. Unsecured comms is a risk; better be careful.”

"I'm careful."

Chavez connected the dots. Rogers, of course everything circled around to him. She'd read their files after Barnes was assigned to her for launch support, some Security Council bullshit to get him out of Albany. 'Centenarian ex-assassin' went over as well as expected. Wilson assured her he wasn't a Council plant, nothing nefarious. Just another super-parolee with a backstory full of trauma playing a few cards short of a deck. Compassion wasn't her strong suit, not in this job, but a team was a team. He'd done good work so far. She folded her arms over the Captain bars on her parka.

"No location details, you know the drill. And for fuck's sake, sign out before you go on flex time."

He had the audacity to grin. "Miss me?"

Rambeau made a face and Chavez snorted. For all his eccentricities, Barnes could dial up the charm when he wanted. It wasn't hard to picture him as a real catch circa 1935. Rogers certainly did. She jerked her head towards the hall. "Don't forget to eat again."

Barnes grunted and stooped in front of the radio, twirling a screwdriver.


	3. Chapter 3

Morning. Five 'till. Brooklyn Bridge. His left knee complained as Steve scrubbed his eyes and checked the reflection in the shaving mirror. He spared a few extra minutes to trim his beard where it tickled his lips and nose, then splashed cold water from the basin like a slap on the face. He picked up his notebook and thumbed to the bookmark. A knock on the door:

"The year is 1812--"

"BITS, you gotta find a new act."

"Tis' no jest! Emperor Napoleon--"

Steve adjusted his coverall buckles and looked to the ceiling. "Status report."

Low radiation meant winds were shifting ahead of stormy weather. The summer had come and gone, indistinguishable from winter save for marginally higher cloud cover. He didn't mind it so much; even the worst conditions grew familiar, eventually. Steve trudged down the corridor for breakfast. What was that saying, about boiling frogs, or was it lobster?

He stopped.

A departure from routine: Two voices in the pantry, neither in a pleasant tone. Steve hung back, notebook tucked against his side.

"You're damn right you should put him on the shuttle," a man said. The voice was familiar, and a name bounced on the cusp of remembrance.

"Don't make me the bad guy here, Sam."

Sam Wilson. Falcon. His heart lifted at the recognition and conjured up humid pre-dawn air around the Tidal Basin in summer, freshly-cut grass on the Mall. Tangy beers in the small morning hours, sunk in a couch next to old issues of Sports Illustrated and gym-sweated clothes. The wreckage of the Triskelion. How long ago? There had been more since then: mourning and long cold missions into burning cities and government roundtables that put a sick pang into his stomach, but the specifics blurred and melted as he tried to examine them.

Sharon (it was definitely Sharon) was still talking: "-- power of attorney and it's in his living will, as you well know."

"It's a death sentence."

"Oh god, cut the drama."

"This is literally where they dump capital offenders and we're gonna leave Captain America here? The Adirondack radiation is poison. If you would've relocated him away from New York like I said--"

Steve realized with a jolt they were talking about him. He was Captain America.

"This is his home, he has his routine. It’s secure. BITS can manage until Barnes gets back.”

“It’s not right.”

“It was his decision."

"Yeah, well, it was a dumb fucking decision."

"Finally something we agree on."

"Hey, it's STEVE!" BITS wavered around the corner on two limbs.

The conversation dropped into awkward silence. So much for eavesdropping. Shooting the android a dirty look, Steve stepped to the pantry threshold. "What decision," he challenged, arms folded in defense against his own confusion.

Steve blinked at the scene in front of him because, well, Sharon was Sharon, but Sam was … Sam was still young. It was jarring. He looked the spitting image of all those years ago in DC. No, not quite. He spied some stray white curls in his hair, tiredness around the eyes.

"Sam, you're --"

Sam held up a hand from where he sat at the cracked linoleum counter across from Sharon, who was massaging her temples. Their mugs of coffee were down to the dregs. He smiled. "Yeah, yeah. Fountain of youth. Called space travel." His face waxed sad as he said it. "Good to see you, Steve."

Space travel. He thought hard. Evacuations, refugees. Shuttles. Sam on a fuzzy video feed, countdown, rocketing up. _See you in a minute._ But it hadn't been a minute, had it? The context was all gone and he was left with only snippets of the past, like a photo album scattered across the floor. Steve emptied into sadness so sudden it nearly strangled him. Get a grip, Rogers, don't go crying before breakfast. Instead he took the last empty seat at the pantry counter, the metal scrape of the chair as harsh as everything else in the cramped room. BITS pushed him a bowl of cooling oatmeal with a spoon stuck down the middle.

"I missed you," Steve said. It sounded stupid but it was the first true thing that came to mind. Sam, in his red-and-white crew parka, bright like it was freshly laundered, was a window back to a better time.

Sam shot a glance at Sharon, his expression strained. "Missed you too, man. How you feeling?"

Steve lifted a shoulder. Always that question. "Living in a puzzle I have to restart every morning. I … I haven't seen you in a long time, have I?"

"Been a while. Hope you didn't lose my CDs."

"Couldn't say," Steve half-joked. He hesitated, spoon midway to his mouth. If Sam was here … "Is Bucky with you?"

Another shared glance. His nostalgia veered back to irritation. He'd come into this room with another unanswered question, he remembered.

"All right. What is it?" Steve dropped his spoon into the congealing mush and crossed his arms again. It might have been more petulant than threatening. BITS stacked and restacked the same set of three plates.

"What?"

"Come on. I'm still Steve Rogers. And yeah, sometimes things get all jumbled and there's a couple years I've just, I don't know, fucking lost completely, apparently, but I’m not stupid. So, what decision? And where's Bucky?" His voice had risen and he was blindsided by the irrational fear that perhaps Bucky was dead, and this was the cover-up. His lungs seized like he'd taken a gasp of subzero air. Doomed to forget over and over that his best friend had yet again been plucked away by a cruel fate. More than a best friend, if he was being honest. The only one left who could reflect back all the old parts of him from a time that seemed ever more distant and remote. Home.

Sharon remained unfazed at his outburst and waved a hand, a cue that Sam took with furrowed brow. BITS ceased its pantomime and observed them quietly.

"Steve--" Sam started, pausing for a sigh that sounded a decade older than he was. "Barnes is on temp assignment at Cleveland Outpost. I know that crew, they're good professionals. Trust me, he's fine. I wouldn't play with you on that, okay?"

"Okay." Cleveland. How many miles away was it?

"What I was … discussing with Sharon earlier, while you were snooping in the hallway--"

"Not snooping."

"--listening to other folks' conversations, is, you got a living will from before your accident. It says you reject resettlement options. You stay here, on Earth, till the end."

"Okay," Steve nodded. That all sounded reasonable. A relief, actually. "And is it near? The end?"

Sharon got up and refilled her mug, setting another aside for Steve. "Of Earth? We don't know. Maybe."

"No, of me," Steve clarified. "I know the serum's broken down. I feel… I look different than before. Older, heavier."

Sam smiled gently. "We all get there eventually, Steve. The accident took a lot out of you."

"What happened?" Steve asked. It was a question so simple, so stupidly basic, and yet fraught with terror. He was sure he'd asked it before, and braced himself to re-hear whatever trauma. Maybe it would spark a memory.

Sharon exhaled and shifted back into her chair gingerly. "You were on a delivery route with a radio tower that needed repairs. When you missed check-in we sent out search and rescue. Barnes found you in the woods, hypothermic with one hell of a hematoma and advanced radiation poisoning. Our best guess was you'd fallen off the tower and tried to get back to the truck, got disoriented. The serum blasted your metabolism to save your life. According to Dr. Banner, it's stuck in survival response to protect you from starvation and freezing to death."

"You're like a cat with nine lives but you're down to, like, three," BITS chimed in.

It was a story told about someone else entirely. That had happened to him? All because he'd fallen off a radio tower? Everything he'd been through before, and that was the kicker? No wonder it wasn't worth remembering. Still, he opened his notebook and wrote: radio tower. And then a second line below that: Bucky on assignment. Maybe ten, twenty pages ago he'd written the very same.

He looked up to find Sharon and Sam grimly tensed on the edge of their seats. While this story was reduced to mere marginalia for him, they had lived it. These were his friends. He set the notebook aside and gathered himself. "BITS, any more oatmeal?"

The android whirred into action. "Oh, sure, let me get some popcorn too. This is the most exciting morning since Johnny set his bunk on fire ."

"Steve, look." Sam leaned forward. His eyes were earnest and sharp. "The next evac is the last one until the meteor field passes. I'm worried about you. I want you to take it while you can."

"Not without Bucky," Steve said like a reflex, breathing in the steam from the second hot bowl BITS passed him. Sam pinched the bridge of his nose, but he pressed on. "Guess it's not the first time I said that. I was born in 1918, Sam. I'm an old dog, learned plenty of new tricks, but at some point relics should stay in the past. You know I respect the hell out of you both, and god knows what you've had to put with, but I'm not resettling."

"And say I get Barnes on board?" Sam asked. Sharon shook her head.

"You won't," Steve replied evenly, though he couldn't pinpoint evidence to support or deny such a claim.

"We'll see. And put away your stubborn face, man."

Sharon scoffed. "Does he have another? C'mon, boys, drop it for now. We're not wasting your visit on this. Eat up, we've got supplies to unload."

***

Sam's supply drop envoy from the orbiting mothership had brought the final restocks to Albany Outpost, future sustenance for a ghost planet. Distribution routes ran heavy this week. Homesteaders who declined the shuttles would be reliant on their own surpluses for the next year, maybe longer. Dog eat dog. Forklifts shouldered the brunt of the massive containers' loads and afterwards their packing pallets were stripped down for firewood, carpentry, whatever use they could find.

Sledding was a perennially popular choice.

The snowfield sloped away from the shuttle launchpad where the PHOENIX III perched, ensconced in preparatory scaffolding. The landscape could be breathtaking. Far-off fog and snow flurries masked the distant mountains and city smoke so that white permafrost merged singly into gray clouds like a vast monochrome painting. Steve couldn't remember the last time he'd painted. Maybe before the war, the old one. Now he was surrounded by, living in, blank canvas.

Sharon's laugh echoed when she hit the bottom of the hill in a spray of snow.

"You still race?" Sam challenged from Steve's left, comically crammed onto a deconstructed pallet.

"Not that old a dog," Steve rejoined and clambered onto his own makeshift sled. There was a non-zero chance the things would break apart mid-ride and leave one of them to eat it down the slope, but that never stopped anyone.

The snow slid fast and smooth, wind whipping through his scarf and drying his teeth where he smiled. A breathless whoop of delight escaped from Sam, and for once Steve's knee didn't hurt and he wasn't forgetful; he flew unburdened into the endless white-gray horizon.

***

Morning. Five 'till. Brooklyn Bridge. Breakfast. Copy the routes. Check the tires.

Steve scanned the CB channels for two hours without picking up so much as a peep. The deliveries grew sparse in his notebook, taken off the Big Board as survivors consolidated homesteads or capitulated to shuttle passenger manifests. Surplus distribution was coming to an end. It made the scavengers bolder out of necessity, and they nosed at the edge of his routes.

He was on 20 east, six miles outside of Syracuse and the swollen ice sheet of Lake Ontario, when the CB signal meter spiked with static prelude.

"Fucking piece of shit, work!" burst through in a fury, and Steve grinned, giddy at the smallest contact. Sounded like an amateur.

He kept one hand relaxed over the wheel, set on cruise control, and shifted in his seat, grabbing the mic. "Roger that, can confirm piece of shit is functioning."

There followed a silence so long Steve's grin faded. Well, maybe all the guy wanted was a straightforward answer. Not everyone missed simple conversation.

Then: "Breaker one-seven, identify?" Tentative.

"Nomad, on the road," he allowed. Scavengers hunted the airwaves too. "And yourself?"

Another silence. "Bucky Barnes," the man said and used his real name like a total fool, the breach of protocol so unexpected that it took a moment to really hit, and the only reason Steve didn't brake the whole damn truck was the snow chains couldn't catch a full-speed slide.

"Bucky," Steve repeated, barely breathed.

_Back before you know it._ Brooklyn dockyard coal soot, his mother’s broth soup, cheap hair gel. The Alps. The helicarrier. _Do you know who I am._

These memories gathered willingly, vividly. And then… Time skipped and blank spots increased like a old record missing its tune. He drifted without context. It was strange, to know a person but not the right version. Steve realized he'd left his finger on the mic button, transmitting dead air. He swallowed.

"Where are you? When are you coming back?" he asked in a rush, before the connection could sputter. "I saw your note."

Pause. "I'm on assignment. Sorry, pal, no details. I wish I could. Fucking unsecured comms." The tone of a smile.

Steve chuckled, unsteady with the joy in his chest. He wanted to hoard every syllable, every inflection. "How about a call sign?"

"Bucky's as good as any. That's just for you."

"Alright then." _Just for you._ He let the mic dangle as he grabbed his notebook, a stray pencil, and scrawled CH 17 - BUCKY across the next blank page. "Are you coming back?" he asked again.

"I will. I promise."

Pitter-patter, went his heart. Steve flushed, bashful even alone as he was. There were too many empty spaces in his memory. "You know I’m not all there in the head, right?" Steve forced himself to say.

"Oh yeah, since childhood."

"Ass."

"Yeah, I know about the accident. And you don't-- You don't owe me anything. Nomad."

"Call me Steve."

"It's not secure."

"But I like hearing you say it."

Pause. "Copy that, Steve."  
  


***

  
Bucky wrenched a custom-fitted bolt into place on the undercarriage of his hulking garage project. He only trusted the jacks to a certain height, and his nose grazed the maze of hybrid alien mechanics and wiring suspended above him. Working through an engine, the little parts all orchestrated together in sync, was a soothing reassurance of order. Wholeness, togetherness. Deprogramming hadn't been pleasant. Trying to fit into an Avengers team led by the son of a colleague he'd assassinated, even less so. Yet it was Tony Stark who'd patiently shown him the innards of his arm, explained the mechanisms and circuitry and necessary maintenance.

Tony had taught him the workshop could be a place of repair, not destruction. Bucky wanted to believe he'd finally collected back all the separate pieces of himself, as much as he could know what those were after so many instances of undoing. The truth was harder; the pieces didn't match quite right and the seams were misaligned. And, of course, as he had tried to mend together, Steve had fallen apart. The whole world had fallen apart.

The garage door from the main outpost building opened and Bucky rolled the creeper seat forward, wiping his hands on his marginally-less-filthy trousers.

"How's she coming along?" Chavez strolled over, and he glimpsed a manila envelope while she perused his workbench. She was a shining and vibrant Captain, spared of the misery that had engulfed Earth, and nearly a hundred years his junior, a fact she'd taken with surprising nonchalance. The Council had relocated him from Albany ( _Steve_ ) for 'launch prep support' and here he was, a dutiful little cog in their machine, as always.

Bucky tapped the sensor panel on the cockpit exterior. It stayed dark, taunting him. What was he missing? He grunted, noncommittal, and tossed a pair of pliers onto the workbench.

Chavez followed him to the wash basin. "So, your last week as a Council asset. Congratulations."

"Don't pop the champagne yet."

"You think anyone wants to waste energy keeping tabs on you once these shuttles go up? They've been looking for an out to cut you loose. All they needed was bureaucratic cover to do it."

"Sure." Once an asset, always an asset. He wiped the last vestiges of grime from his left hand with a spare rag and glanced at Chavez when she made no move to leave.

"One more thing." She reached into the envelope and brought out a grainy photocopy of … A blueprint? He hadn't seen one of those in ages. "Recognize this?"

Bucky accepted the page and frowned, scanning it. It could be anything: a buried Walmart, deserted barracks. The layout, though, it was peculiar. There was an old mine shaft and rail yard access, but more than that it seemed familiar. He tucked stray locks of his hair behind an ear and looked closer. The sublevel block of rooms almost like … Cells. A chill (or was it electricity) shuddered up his spine. He'd been here before, a long, long time ago. "Hydra base."

Chavez nodded. "South of Pittsburgh, No Man's Land. "

"What about it?" He rolled his left shoulder against a phantom twinge.

Chavez opened the envelope again and this time produced a mildewed and creased Polaroid photo, faded to pastels.

"Twenty-one year old female, Danielle Cage-Jones, adopted by Puritan fundamentalists after impact. Her father's been searching for her. That old Hydra base is a Puritan homestead, and we have solid intel that she wants out. Recon first, then extract and evac."

The child in the photo smiled broadly, her hair twisted with playful beads, one front tooth missing, perched on her father's broad shoulders at a now-nameless beach. Just another memento quantifying how much had been lost. He wrapped his head around what Chavez was saying. The Puritans mostly kept to themselves, content to practice a pious lifestyle, live off the remnants of the land, and blow up anyone who disturbed them.

"So this is a mission," he clarified.

"It is."

"I didn't get an official debrief."

"You won't."

His mouth pulled tight. "This some sort of cute Council setup? Get me on an unsanctioned mission right before parole's up?"

"Ask your old pal Wilson."

Wilson? Well, then. God damn. He privately reassessed Chavez. "How solid is your intel?"

"A couple people on the ground, a couple people on the Wakandan mothership. Solid enough."

He chewed it over, as if he still had a decision to make. Chavez knew enough of his bygone miseries to play right into them. Smart. Adding new things to care about was a dangerous game, but the girl in the photograph challenged him with unwavering eyes. Family reunions were rare enough to be miraculous. Homesteads needed young bodies, willing or not.

Bucky gave his answer, Chavez set a meeting to review strategy, and he signed out on flex time with a knot in his stomach.

Fucking fundamentalists. Take on an unsanctioned mission _now_? The timing couldn't be worse. Bucky stewed on these latest developments as he gathered his balaclava, parka, gloves, helmet. He passed the long-defunct delivery rigs in the main garage, and grabbed the keys for his snowmobile. It revved with a low growl, belying the shabby exterior. Underneath was what counted. People traded premium for quality engine work, whether or not you were a formerly notorious assassin with a metal arm. There were far more terrible threats these days.

The sun was high in the sky and ostensibly he was headed to salvage parts. Indeed, he paid a visit to the old scrapyard, nearly picked clean after years of scavenging. He bent down and released the clip on his GPS unit and left it inside a gutted Toyota. A gust of wind blew through, rousing a chorus of rusted creaking parts.

He pulled out his map and compass, and set his course with one frostbite-proof hand, just like in Siberia.

Before long the air traffic control tower loomed on the horizon, a modern leaning tower of Pisa. To the naked eye the buried airport was, as everything else, a desolate tundra. The sound of more snowmobiles carried on the wind. Two, four, five approaching from the airfield with white and black paint jobs.

Bucky slowed and then idled while his heart continued to race. He had one Sig strapped below the handlebars and another on his person, aside from the pocket and hunting knives, but he wouldn't use them. The end objective here, the potential, was priceless.

Masked scavengers encircled him, their engines revving, helmets painted with skulls. All of them carried guns but there was no telling about ammunition, a limited commodity that grew more limited each time some jackass used ten bullets where one would suffice. Bucky sat motionless, protected beneath his own black helmet and its dark-tinted visor. They feared him more.

Well, all but save one, who lifted a hand and pointed back to the airfield. _Let's go_.

A low tunnel in the snow descended into a buried, boarded-up terminal whose interior was a cobbled-together mash of leftover plane cabins and repurposed concession bodegas. Bucky wasn't entirely sure how much of the airport was under revised use, but scavenger networks were extensive and shadowy. Most were excommunicates in some way or another, people who couldn't or wouldn't settle in homesteads. No delivery routes here. You traded, raided, or you died.

One by one their snowmobiles quieted, but the scavengers' helmets stayed on. Reasonable; his parka was embroidered with the Security Council double-lion logo. He watched their leader tug off a skull-emblazoned ski mask to reveal a badly-scarred and depressingly familiar face. Bucky's stomach churned, like it had their last meeting. This was necessary. Grit it out.

"It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, Soldier."

_My name is Barnes_. "What's the update."

"’What's the update?’ No hello for your old friend Brock? That hurts, that really hurts me."

It was a joke, because Brock Rumlow hadn't felt pain since the Triskelion implosion. His face was leathery, scarring weathered with the years, stubble grayed where it grew in uneven patches between pink-black-white streaks. How did the worst people cling to life like barnacles? He gave Bucky a once-over and nodded into the terminal.  "Yeah, I'll show you," he said, dropping the pretense.

At a repurposed gate lounge hung a map of the Northeast with various cryptic notations. Bucky spied the old Hydra emblem scrawled over what used to be southern Maryland. Cult territories were growing. Rumlow grabbed a beaten laptop and spun it around on a table littered with cigarette ash.

It was a SHIELD bureaucratic intel report addressed to Alexander Pierce, dated from the early 2000's. Bucky reluctantly took a seat. Rumlow up-close smelled like old onions and rotted meat, and he held in a gag. Reread a few sentences. Something about a Dr. Stephen Strange. His gaze caught.

The Eye of Agamotto.

New York City. An address.

"That's it."

Rumlow nodded. "But the Eye ain't there. That whole block got pancaked." He cut his hand across with a whistle to emphasize. 

"What about this Dr. Strange?"

"Fuckin' dead end. But I got another name: Foggy Nelson." He slid across a scrap of trash with the name. Bucky didn't take it.

"Who?"

"That's our number one guy," Rumlow drawled, picking at a yellowed front tooth. "The yarn that made the rounds in lockup? Shit doesn't appear outta thin air. I asked a few old-timers; he's the source. Ex-New Yorker, go figure. Find me Nelson, we get a lead."

_Our. We._ Bucky kept his tone low and level. "He could be dead."

"Yeah, could be. But I'm not. You're not. Have a little faith, Soldier. Now go fetch."

Thick storm clouds swirled on the horizon as Bucky kicked his snowmobile into gear towards the scrapyard and Cleveland Outpost. A heavy web of guilt and self-loathing trailed him. When Rumlow had first sought him out, Bucky could've killed him on sight, repercussions and reformations be damned. It sounded insane: people who swore up and down they'd experienced a time freeze during the meteor impact, specifically in Manhattan. And sure, being in the midst of a traumatizing, mass-casualty, world-ending event would probably spur strange mental states. And prisoners had plenty of time to spin a good tale, even one as far-fetched as an amulet with magical powers.

But those were two dots a well-positioned Pierce-era Hydra alumni could connect.

Hydra had plenty of irons in the occult fire.  The Eye of Agamotto controlled time itself -- allegedly. Paired with the Tesseract or scepter, Hydra would've been unstoppable. Fortunately for Dr. Stephen Strange, the organization crumbled into tatters before anything came of Pierce's intel. And then, of course, the end of the world. Which left exactly two people from Pierce's inner circle and one closely kept secret.

Rewind to before the impact, no earlier, no later. Save billions.

As if Rumlow's concern was saving lives. Pre-impact he'd had it good, a mercenary overseas, but the Security Council sweep ended that. Bucky retrieved his GPS from the Toyota and re-oriented. Rewinding before the meteor meant erasing the death, destruction, and evacuations. Mending his own heartache. All of them would get a second chance, a do-over. Pierce used to croon that his missions were a gift to mankind, that they shaped the century. A load of syrupy patriotic bullshit. But this mission … Maybe this one was real.

And if it was, then the ends justified the means.


	4. Chapter 4

The last storm had scattered fresh detritus across the highway, strange bits of incongruous trash like half a McDonald's golden arch and a string of cattle skulls. The plow ran interference. Steve shifted in the driver's seat and his knee seized despite the earlier pill. Gingerly he massaged the tendons and removed The Very Best of Marvin Gaye that was threatening to repeat a third time. Without music there was only the rumbling chug of the engine eating up miles, two hours until his next stop, and the old itch like he'd forgotten to do something. Steve riffled one-handed through his small CD collection. A scrap of notepaper fluttered out.

He glanced down: CH 17 - BUCKY.

_Shit!_ God, of course! How long--? Steve fumbled with the CB dial and tucked the paper around his radio mounting, the better to see it later. One fucking thing to remember, one simple fucking thing, and he-- Fuck. _Fuck!_

He slammed the wheel with an open palm and it dented at the side. Channel 17 was empty static. He grabbed the mic, pressed the button. Cleared his throat.

"Break, one seven. Nomad on the road. Anyone out there?"

The ensuing silence crumpled him inwards like paper in a fist.

He passed the abandoned exit for Schoharie, then Richmondville and its collapsed overpass. 

Repeat the call, repeat it again. He grit his teeth. Stupid. How could he have been so--

"Copy that, Nomad. Hey Steve."

Bucky, reaching through and catching him. Steve threw his head back and smiled with sheer relief. It hurt his cheeks, like an expression he didn't use often enough. "Bucky."

"How's the route? You get that oil change?"

It snapped back to him. He'd put the notepaper in the glovebox yesterday during maintenance cleanup. Like everything else, it had turned into out-of-sight out-of-mind. Okay. It was okay.

"Yeah, last night. Route's clear. Where are you?"

"Unsecured comms," Bucky said with a tone that meant it wasn't the first or second reminder. Déjà vu taunted him, the sweet and sour resonance of familiarity.

Steve bit his lip in frustration. Too many questions without answers. No, there were answers, he just couldn't seem to match them with the questions and hold the big picture together. He tried to quiet his jangling nerves. Keep to the road, where's the next stop.

"How are you? You have food?"

"Plenty of water ice. Thinking of starting a corner store for it, actually." Bucky's voice smiled back.

"Hm, original. … You have a team? They treating you okay?"

"Yeah, the kids are alright. Gotta think you'd like their attitude. They know Falcon."

Falcon. Sam. He blinked back a scene, sledding. "Anyone gives you trouble…" Steve trailed off. What was he going to do? He couldn't remember the CB channel, let alone offer meaningful assistance. "You tell Sharon," he finished lamely, churning in shame.

"Hey, don't worry about me." Earnest and soft, a gentle sunlight.

"You know I gotta," Steve murmured.

"Yeah, I know." Pause. "You keeping warm?"

"Been colder."

"Oh that's a morbid fuckin' joke, Rogers, Jesus," Bucky chuckled.

Steve huffed a laugh and it sounded strange in the cab, an alien noise he wasn't sure he'd made. "You working on anything? Other than assignment, I mean."

"Wanna hear about synthetic fuel cell repair?" Cheeky.

"I got two hours to kill, try me."

"Ha, you asked for it. Mm. Where to start."

"What's it look like?"

"Yeah, I'll sketch it for you. So, you got your standard car battery, right? Small, boxy, two nodes at the top…"

The cadence of his voice, fuzzed with static, relieved a hidden tension within Steve, and he relaxed his weight back into the seat as the miles scrolled past. If he kept driving, could he keep the conversation, Bucky, with him? No sleep, straight to the other end of the Earth, maybe to where Bucky was hunched over a radio, maybe in his bunk room with the light low so it was only their voices, the mic warm from his flesh hand and his breath on it.

Steve swallowed around a lump in his throat that was sudden and painful. There was a homestead in a hundred miles and he had a route to keep. Tears froze before they left your eyes out here.

***

Honey-warm sun lingered like a caress, and maybe it was a smooth hand trailing down his back, riding the dip in his spine. There was a presence beside him: Home. _Don't stop._

Steve came out of the dream all at once and the details fled like wisps of smoke, leaving him in the darkness of his bunk room with an undeniable erection pressed against the mattress. He exhaled and closed his eyes again. The less thinking, the better this would go. He rolled onto his back, spat in his hand, and slipped it into his long johns, against the softness of his belly. The slick contact was enough to send a sparking shudder of relief up his spine, send his brain scrambling for images -- coarse dark hair between thighs, the fullness of the muscles there, damp heat and sharp salt on the flat of his tongue -- Steve grunted, his grip tightening -- _Don't stop._ The orgasm crested fast and he pumped out in bursts across himself, spunk filling the room with the scent of musky sex and then cooling. He had a dull headache and lay breathing heavily, mind a purposeful blank for a moment. Get up, don't just lay in your own mess. Steve wiped his hand on his already soiled sweatpants and rolled from the bed, wincing at the cold floor on his bare feet. The light turned on with his movement and it was far too bright.

The shower was lukewarm. If you wanted true hot water, it was best to boil it and then bathe, otherwise the water heater ran the risk of overload. He rinsed his remains from the hair on his chest and belly, noting where there were a few grays. Was it absurd to have a little vanity at the end of the world? He toweled off, shivered, and let the cold wake him fully as he added back layers of clothing.

A photo by the nightstand caught his eye. Steve squinted. Bucky, unquestionably. He looked different. They both did. He tugged his sweater lower to where it widened over his hips, and studied the picture. Bucky was shyly radiant, his shadows lifted in a way Steve hadn't seen since before the war. He looked… He looked… Steve realized with muted horror he was beginning to chub up again. Jesus, Rogers, get a grip. He clenched his jaw and --

His alarm clock went off and he startled, banging his knee against the dresser with a curse. Brow clouded, he fumbled with his boots. The Steve in that photo was a perfect Steve. He was sure of himself and his memories, not a single gray hair, with the physique to rival a Greek god. Oh how the mighty had fallen.

At breakfast he stewed over his oatmeal as it congealed into a sticky mass. BITS was plugged in to Sharon's laptop, downloading the latest satellite data. "Shocking no one, we're in for a storm this weekend."

Sharon braced herself against the counter and stretched, wincing as her back popped. "How bad?"

"Could be better, could be worse. Forecasting is a fine art."

"Steve, better prep for an overnight."

He thought about earlier that morning, the dream of a warm body so close to his own. Bucky's body, because of course it was. To have the carnal knowledge and not the context was infuriating bordering on despair. They'd lain together before, in trenches, in cold Brooklyn apartments, but not like that, never like that. In those days it was different. There was Peggy, for one, bright as the sun, and he'd turned his petals towards her rays, blossoming. After the train, it was like being uprooted into hard clay -- abrupt and sudden, the realization a cruel knife in the gut.

And now? Maybe now he was too battered, half-dead like the pine forests, happier days both behind him and lost to recall. Peggy had met her fate with as much grace and peace as one could, closing all her chapters before the dementia consumed them, accepting her losses as they mounted. She'd lived a full life, but he'd raged against the theft, that it left him sole curator of their brief intimacy, like hearing _who the hell is Bucky_. He thought nothing could cut him any lower. But what if his small future held the same fate? Who would he become? He was halfway there already, though the potholes were always the same, no larger or smaller. He was a personal Smithsonian in miniature and a stealthy arsonist had vandalized various collections, his precious artifacts charred beyond recognition.

"Steve." Sharon crossed her arms on the table, the furrow of her brow deepening. "Okay, I’ll bite. What's on your mind?"

"Just tired," Steve said truthfully, the words rolling in his mouth like a clump of the oatmeal. "Sorry, overnight?"

***

Bucky hit the floor tangled in thick blankets, left hand brandishing the Sig hidden under his pillow. He shoved aside the bedding and scrabbled into a corner. Protect the vitals, defend. Secure the perimeter. The cold needled his sweat-damp long johns. Quiet. No movement. The shadowy shapes resolved into a lamp on his workbench, the ham radio beside it.

Cleveland. He was in Cleveland.

The sensation of imminent threat subsided and, trembling, he willed himself into the closet-sized washroom and locked the door. Switched on the bare light bulb and confirmed his reflection.

It had been so real. They always were.

He pressed his fingertips to his forehead, as if he might physically soothe the emerging splitting headache, and considered the bottle of synthetic benzos perched by the wash basin.

_Put him down, hook him up--_

He retched into the toilet chute. No meds tonight.

Bucky pressed his face into the threadbare bath towel and navigated back to the bed, where he forced the gun from his hand. Thank god he hadn't shot the radio. He peeled off the long johns and layered himself in warm fleece. Four hours of sleep and that was that. Too early for the garage and he didn't feel like calisthenics. He stepped into the dim hallway, nerves still frayed.

Cleveland Outpost's comms room was a bustling little room even in the dead of night, the systems always scanning and syncing to one another. Bucky kept the lights off and brought one of the smaller monitors to life. Local weather radar, radioactivity trending metrics. The server towers hummed and blinked the connections through. He called up the mothership network and scrolled through the list of actives. Pinged one and waited.

A tiny pinwheel: Connecting …

On the console the green-hued face of Bruce Banner abruptly loomed.

“Barnes. What’s wrong.”

Wilson was in the background on some kind of headset holographics call, and he idly spun in and out of frame on his chair.

“Just, ah, couldn’t sleep.” Bucky's voice scraped like gravel. The Security Council's mothership vultured in orbit these days. If it weren't for the evac shuttle fleet, such a casual and spontaneous connection would’ve been impossible.

Banner relaxed and nodded, typing off-screen. “Hey, wanna take a look at these gamma radiation calculations I’ve been running all day? That’ll put you to sleep in no time.”

“Good to know I’m not interrupting.”

They looked like most everyone else did these days: worn out, wrung out, and tired. Sam had space travel to thank for his youth. Banner … Bucky wondered if Banner was doomed like he and Steve were, the serum constantly replenishing and revitalizing despite the death of everything around them. Subverting the natural order of things. The radiation could crack it, given enough exposure; Steve was proof. Bucky spent plenty of his own time out in areas where he shouldn't loiter, in the name of looting or surveying or whatever other excuse. When a single gray had crept into his hair it came with a pang of relief.

Now Bucky looked at the haggard thumbnail of himself in the corner of the screen and, well, sure. Banner might have reason to be alarmed.

“System says your vitals spiked an hour ago. Have you tried the breathing exercises?”

“Fuck, I forgot.”

Banner watched him expectantly. Right. He counted in, two, three, four; out, two three, four. Again, why not. His shoulders sank as the tension ebbed.

“Anything changed this week?” Banner asked over the rims of his glasses, absurdly perched on his large face.

“Changed?”

“Your vitals are all over the place. According to the system, you’re having panic attacks again.”

He shook his head. Of course there was the matter of his newfound cooperation with a certain former tormentor but he wasn’t about to spill those beans.

“Must be the evac prep,” he lied.

“Chavez or Carter know about these episodes?”

Bucky tensed again. “No, and they won’t. I can handle it.”

“Just like old times,” Banner muttered, and resumed his focus on the gamma calculations.

“I got enough years with enough shrinks and meds, I can handle it.” He'd also had plenty of worse years, so, relatively, this was a walk in the park.

Banner shrugged, massive. “The brain is a weird thing, Barnes. We don’t get to say when we’re done processing our traumas.”

“Yeah, well, it’s bullshit.”

“A characteristically wise approach. Try to remember the breathing exercises. It’s really very Zen.”

“That what helps you?”

Banner shot him a look. “It’s something to do. Hold on, I have another call.”

Bucky checked the timestamp on the monitor as Banner muted the line. There was an unsanctioned mission to prep for and a later errand to run, though he risked a radiation warning by going out so soon after Pittsburgh.

According to the Security Council's database, Foggy Nelson was alive and well, serving time in ISS detention. And that meant Rumlow could work his contacts for a call. His stomach churned once, sharply.

There was still the option to abandon the whole thing, tell Rumlow to fuck off. One slip-up on the ham radio in his bunk room ( _meet me, I'll find you_ ) and he could exchange the barren tundra for Steve's sleep-warmed embrace that smelled faintly of diesel. The yearning ran deep like a physical pain, like his arm had been, wrenching through him.

"Earth to Barnes." Sam was on screen. Banner bent over a steaming carton of noodles, now with the holographic headset. Orbit was a busy place.

"Yeah, Sam, I'm here. Think you got that switched." His stomach gurgled and he rubbed his eyes. Had he eaten dinner?

"Almost four in the morning there, you gotta stop clubbing so late. Brings out the bags under your eyes."

"Cleveland doesn't really have a nightlife."

"See that's why I'm concerned. How you doing?”

He laughed once, short and humorless. “Surviving.”

“I hear that. Hey, listen, Rambeau and Chavez are good people." A meaningful pause. Right, can't talk about unsanctioned mission work where Big Brother might hear.

"Could've told me earlier."

Sam raised an eyebrow and chose his words slowly. “Haven’t seen you much these days. I know Steve can be … a lot."

Bucky prickled defensively. "I can walk and chew gum, Sam."

"Steve's a lot more complicated than chewing gum." Sam leveled with him. "Look, there's another thing. You know his situation, this being the last evac for a while. His living will."

"I know it," Bucky allowed.

"He and I had that talk before with our eyes clear. But the way he is now? It doesn’t sit right."

Bucky softened. Sam had lost just as much too. Bitterness came so easy these days, it was hard to remember kindness. "That's not on you, believe me. You know how stubborn he is."

"Stupid stubborn. If you went, he'd follow. It's like the number one rule of co-dependency."

"Call it what you want, he made that will for a reason, before all this, and I gotta respect that."

"Sharon said the same shit.” Sam sat back unsatisfied, the blue Security Council space scrubs wrinkling. “I don't like it … I didn't think we'd get here so soon, you know? Man, you aren't the only one sleeping rough. Because it feels like yesterday, that I'm gonna meet him on Independence and we'll go a few laps before breakfast. It _was_ yesterday. What if next time I come back here and it's all gone? I know it's shit now, but I mean gone gone."

The blink of an eye.

Bucky ran his flesh hand over his metal one, tracing the plate grooves. "When they used to wake me after cryo-- It hurt, all over. And you're in a strange place, with strange people, maybe you don't even speak the language … But then, eventually, you find friends. Good ones. They don't replace the ones from before, but they carry you forward.”

Sam gave him a sad smile, a glimmer of the old warmth. “Yeah. It’s hard, that moving forward stuff.”

And wasn’t that a lesson he’d etched into his bones.

“It's your time, Sam. You got a good crew. But for me and him, it's the end of the line. You gotta know."

After the call terminated, the mothership’s orbit carried to the other side of the world, Bucky laid his tactical suit on the cot. He pictured the Hydra base and dread ticked at the nape of his neck. So he did Banner’s Zen shit and cleaned the Sig and strapped on every knife he owned, which was about a dozen. He would see this through, even if it meant scraping himself down to the skeleton one more time.


	5. Chapter 5

Snow crunched underfoot as Bucky trudged up another ridgeline riddled with dead timber and half-buried industrial debris. His breath echoed heavy in his own ears, and he heard Rambeau in a similar rhythm ahead of him, her outline eerie in the night-vision goggles. She kept to herself around him, and he let it be. Get the job done. They had hiked a solid hour since stashing their snowmobiles, and he guessed they had another thirty minutes ahead of them. Stopping to rest could be deadly in these temperatures and rescue would be tricky this close to the base.

There was a muted beep as Rambeau adjusted their trajectory accordingly, her footsteps veering slightly right.

"Bridge around the bend," she threw back, muffled, a disembodied voice in the darkness.

Bucky grunted in acknowledgement and pictured the surrounding landscape. Rolling rocky hills, long-abandoned coal mines from before the impact, pocked with quarries and train tracks for freight, a network of bridges. The old base was tucked into a mountainside and had masqueraded as a nondescript transit communications office since the late seventies, sheltering its true purpose of shepherding illicit weapons and defense materials through this gateway into the Midwest. He'd been here before as cargo.

They picked their way down a steep ravine, the spikes in their boots grabbing at the hardened snow cover. The riverbed had long since iced over and the rusted railway bridge sat half-dismantled and twisted on snow. Across the river, a squat black building disrupted the natural jaggedness of the rocky mountainside profile, thin spindles of antennae raised into the sky.

Rambeau's footsteps hesitated. "Moment of truth."

The base surely had defenses, but it was anyone's guess how much of Hydra's tech the Puritans had been able to salvage and utilize on limited electrical supply. The thing was, defenses these days were built to either withstand the weather or detect scavenger attacks, and scavengers would never trek six miles on foot to raid a place like this. On snowmobiles, sure, and Bucky was willing to bet one of those antennae was rigged to detect exactly that. But on foot, camouflaged in the night, only thermal infrared imaging would have a chance at picking them up. And who the hell would be up scanning thermal surveillance feeds at this hour of the night with no expected imminent attack. All this considered, their chances of reaching the air vents undetected were pretty good. It didn't mean Bucky was any less anxious crossing the exposed stretch of river.

"Love me some razorwire," Rambeau muttered when they reached the opposite side.

They were close enough that Bucky could hear the base's generator hum. He stepped to where Rambeau waited and reached out his left arm, feeling for the brush of metal on metal. Tested the tautness; it was do-able. He grabbed and pulled down, creating a gap in the fencing but careful not to break it. Footprints would be erased by the wind, but not property damage. They painstakingly maneuvered through the wiring, careful not to snag a scrap of clothing.

The ventilation covers along the side of the building were easy enough to unscrew, and they worked silently and efficiently. Bucky hooked a line to the lip of the vent and scooted in, belly-down, Rambeau behind. The duct narrowed quickly and the passage was tight, dark, a steady whir of air gentle against his face. He placed his gloved hands softly and used his forearms to slid forward. Twenty-four measured slides later, the shaft turned down.

Bucky stopped.

He knew, objectively, he had to go head-first. It was in the blueprints. He was sure of where he was: above the old administrative offices in C wing. This was a simple infiltration. He'd spent sixteen hours in a Armenian crawlspace smaller than this. Two hours navigating an underwater cave off the coast of Portugal.

And yet.

He broke out in a cold sweat, his body refusing to budge forward an inch. The vent gaped before him and the air was close, humid, not enough. He pushed back, shoulders tight and bunched, and the duct groaned, threatening to rupture.

He was stuck.

Okay. Okay. 

Bucky exhaled. He couldn't even reach his damn emergency meds. The pitch darkness was suffocating, the old evil of this place's past clutching him eagerly, taking him in -- No, he had to relax --

But his mind spooled out and his chest tightened on the inhale and it was a mistake, he couldn't get air, not enough air, and everything was too tight and now he was gasping, sucking through his teeth, too loud -- he was in the cryo vault again --

_Are you abandoning this mission, Soldier?_

\-- he had to get out, get out, get out, they were going to trap him tight and then --

 _Failure is not an option, do you understand me, Soldier? Are you ready to comply? You fucking comply when I tell you_ \--

It was Rumlow coming at him, hooking up the --

A gloved hand gripped his ankle and he stuffed his fist into his mouth to stop a scream. 

Someone whispered his name. He focused.

"Barnes. Barnes, come on, come on. Fuck. What the hell?"

Rambeau. Right. "I gotta get out of here," he croaked raggedly, a shiver wracking his whole body, left arm whirring.

"Yeah, all right. Okay."

"Just … Just a minute."

Get it together, Barnes. Rambeau needed him in the right headspace now, and so did Danielle Cage-Jones. He was supposed to be the old hand at this, not wetting himself in the ductwork. Bucky willed his muscles to relax and felt space open up fractionally around him. Sure he wasn't as svelte as years past but fucking hell he wasn't about to end it all stuffed like a sausage in some shitty venting. He thought only about wriggling back the next inch, and the feel of his fingertips on the duct, and the pinch of his toes at the tips of his boots, and how the Glock on his left was digging into his quad. And soon freezing fresh air brushed the gaps where his balaclava and socks and gloves had wrinkled.

Freedom.

Bucky fell to the snow and took a breath so deep it burned his lungs. He flooded with embarrassed relief and fumbled with his utility belt, swallowing down a pill dry before his brain could catch up with that aversion. Like tap-dancing through a minefield. It'd be enough to dial down the shrieking rawness of his nerves.

Rambeau hung back as Bucky steadied himself against the vent opening, tiny icicles forming on his sweat. He was acutely conscious of her attention. Fuck, she'd have to report it to Chavez. The Council would try to force him to medical, delay release. He focused on controlling his pulse instead of starting a new spiral.

"I'll take the mine entrance," she whispered, decisive.

"I'm coming with you." Bucky wrenched the words out and wondered if he wasn't still programmed somehow, some way, to doggedly finish his missions. By all counts he was a liability now. He rescrewed the ventilation cover and collected the line with stiffly controlled movement.

Rambeau gave him a once-over and checked her watch. "Suit yourself."

They picked their way back downriver and partway up a rocky slope. Bucky's tremors settled and his footing grew more sure. He replayed the vent entrapment and it seemed absurd. That these episodes were returning with a vengeance was surely no coincidence. Deal with the devil and reap the nightmares. It was a problem.

He raised a hand to his nose as a sulfuric stench wafted from the old mine drainage tunnel. Frozen yellow bile congealed around the decrepit grating. Fucking fantastic. He yanked the grate out in a spray of toxic runoff ice. Couldn't have just toughed it out in the ventilation, Barnes. Now you're due a solid day of therapy _and_ laundry.

Rambeau clambered into the mine shaft, ducking under the old wooden beams that trailed into the mountain, and beckoned him to a ladder anchored against the rock. It was a short climb to the mine's portal room, full of broken abandoned equipment with half-scrubbed logos, company fronts Hydra had used to excavate the mountain a hundred years ago. The steel door sealing the mine from the base was sturdy but the padlock long-rusted.

Beyond, a bleak concrete corridor branched off into smaller rooms. The sublevel cells. Bucky's head throbbed. There were memories here, if he went looking for them. Yeah, that and another mental breakdown. He kept his eyes trained in front of him. Some things were better left in the dark. The passage terminated in a spiral iron staircase before a bricked-up old elevator shaft. Dim fluorescent lighting from upstairs drifted down.

Rambeau peered up the staircase, then turned her attention to the decrepit electrical box by the elevator.

"No way that's a main fuse," Bucky muttered.

"Doesn't need to be," Rambeau said. "Ready?"

"Sure," he guessed. Then she slid off her glove and touched a bare finger to the thickest wire snaking from the box.

Everything -- lights, the faint hum of the ventilation system, probably more than a few defense systems -- went down with a dramatic groan into pitch silence. This was the signal, and Bucky concealed his startled amazement. 

That kind of power? She could take him out with her pinky finger. And it wasn't the type of thing you'd advertise to a planet on electrical rationing. Between Rambeau and Chavez, there was more happening in Cleveland than he'd bargained for.

Rambeau was already up the staircase and he hastened to follow. No time to dwell. A place like this would have a backup generator or two at the ready. They passed the old administrative offices and Bucky listened closely. A few alarmed voices gathered in the dormitory branch.

"--Brand new spark plugs, I told Jim--"

Two men shoved through a door next to them, flashlight beam dancing. Rambeau pulled herself tight to the wall and Bucky rested a hand on his Glock, heart thudding.

They passed by, oblivious. Keep going.

The voices grew more distinct as they entered the dormitory branch, and Bucky veered into the washroom, Rambeau close behind. Most people would avoid baring their ass on a toilet with the power out, which meant it was the perfect rendezvous spot. The door swung shut with a faint thud and Bucky jammed it with a boot.

"The light shines in the darkness?"

He crouched and went for his gun, but it was only a stout robed woman at the sinks. A second woman, younger and slighter in a nightgown, hovered beside. Her dim flashlight was a bright burst in his goggles as he relaxed.

"The darkness has not overcome it," Rambeau replied, a smile warming her words. She embraced the older woman. "Nana."

"Lord, it's been so long Nicky, hasn't it." A rich voice like instruments in an orchestra. _Couple people on the ground_ , Chavez had said. More than that; there was a network here.

"You're well?"

"As can be. Don't waste your worry."

"Luke sends his thanks, sincerely. … And you must be Danielle?"

"Dani," the other woman murmured, regarding Rambeau and Barnes with shuttered caution. Her hair was fastened beneath a scarf but her face was the spitting image of the photograph. She was the youngest survivor he'd seen in years.

"Dani, then. I'm Monica and this is Barnes." She eyed him as Rambeau pulled out a tightly folded envelope. "Your daddy wanted you to read this." Then back into her utility belt for the outpost receiver. "Nana can show you how this works. And if you have second thoughts … That's okay."

Dani took both items soundlessly with a nod, and Nana shooed Rambeau towards the door.

"All right now, they'll have the generator replaced in no time. The launch is set?"

"Set and sure." Rambeau gave her one final, tight hug and turned to Dani. "We'll be back, but only if that's what you want."

"Go on then, go on," Nana hushed, sparing Bucky a glance. It wasn't his place to speak up here.

Whatever operation was at the root, it was far-reaching and well-established. Chavez trusted him with this mission, and Rambeau with her powers. That's what a team did, they trusted one another. It was a leap of faith.

But Sam knew Bucky longer, better. And that was why Sam hadn't said a damn thing. 

Compromised assets were no good.

They were past the first ridgeline, cloud cover lightening in the east, when Rambeau finally stopped him, hidden beneath goggles and the balaclava’s thick fur lining.

“You okay?”

“Think so.”

She nodded, her expression a mystery. “No vents next time.”

“No vents,” he agreed, and waited for the inevitable follow-up question.

Their breath hung in the air and they were little more than two black specks against the hillside of mottled snow and ice.

“Let’s go,” she said at last. “Back by noon and I'll give you a tip on that access wiring for your project. You connected the input wrong.”

An olive branch. Maybe he wouldn't end up in medical. Bucky huffed and shook his head, relieved, trekking behind her. “You watched me work on that thing for a whole month with crossed wires?”

“Don’t get a lot of entertainment out here.”

***

Steve studied the latest weather station readouts, roughly overlaying the forecast trajectory from Sharon's laptop with the regional topo maps in the gear room. Sharon blew in from the loading dock and unwrapped her scarf, nose red with cold.

"How's it look?"

"Shitty." BITS smacked the old GPS unit from the rig and it sparked, beeped, then went stubbornly silent.

"Give it up, that thing's a lost cause." Sharon drained the last of her thermos and exhaled a cloud of steam.

BITS began unscrewing the back panel. "How many Bio-Intelligent Thought Systems does it take to fix a single GPS unit from the year 2014?"

"Ok, so, blizzard?" Sharon sniffed, took off her gloves, and rubbed her hands together, hunching over Steve where he sat with the laptop.

It could get dicey. He rubbed his beard and showed her the projections. "Barometer should drop late in the afternoon, only looking at three feet through midnight but check out these gust estimates."

"Better shelter the truck tight or she'll tip. What's your take on the route?"

Steve laid out his plan, estimated fuel use and time stamps for check-ins, all neatly aligned in his notebook. Too long a drive coupled with bad weather spelled trouble. He couldn't remember the last time he'd done an overnight. Surely he had; the prep and planning came to him too naturally.

"Get the deliveries done and get back," she warned.

"Not exactly taking joyrides, Sharon."

She stayed him as he rose, maps and notebook gathered. "I wouldn't be sending you out if it wasn't mission-critical. It's a tight window before launch and you're our last driver."

"That's the job. I know the risks."

"Yeah." Her palm was cold where it touched the back of his hand.

"Then why do I feel like you're apologizing?" Steve scrutinized her expression but it offered no insight. He turned his own warm palm upwards and gave hers a squeeze. She was the glue that held this outpost together. Here he was again, drawn into orbit around a capable Carter. The more things changed, the more some things stayed the same.

She smiled a little. "Take care of yourself."

***

Fourteen hours later and Steve sank into the soft, familiar cab seat.

He went through the usual motions, muscle memory, finishing the standard sixty-point inspection. The passenger side door opened and BITS folded into the cab, immediately tinkering with the seat adjustments and safety belt. Change in routine meant he got a chaperone. Steve grumbled and tossed his suit, a spare water jug, and the pamphlet of topo maps into the back of the cab where blankets piled high on a pull-down cot. He tucked his notebook beside him.

Sharon rapped twice on the side paneling. Good to go. She raised a hand in farewell as he eased the rig from the garage, and in his rear view mirror her tightly bundled figure was small yet stalwart against the wind.

The sweet crooning of Marvin Gaye cut short as BITS jabbed at the sound system controls.

"Oh no. No, no. I can't listen to this again, Rogers. Wilson set this up as a cruel prank for us all."

"Hey, gentle!" Steve admonished while BITS scrolled through the other CDs. A loud blast of rock music startled him and the truck swerved briefly. He groaned as it tickled his cobwebbed memories. "This is Tony Stark's music."

"Can confirm."

The mention pulled a thread of associations with it: Avengers Tower, Iron Man, and further back, Howard. It threatened to be too much melancholy at once, hinting at a gaping maw of loss that defied his comprehension, and he let the thread slip away. There was a route to run. The drumbeat and engine battled for vibrational space in his skull, the dull snow and duller sky merging into one, broken only by the ragged edge of the mountain range. The clouds hung low like fog. They passed the lopsided, beaten exit sign for Utica at exactly one hour in, and he flipped the CB radio channel.

"Break one seven, Bucky, you out there? This is Nomad on the road."

BITS swiveled its head owlishly. "Excuse me? What the fuck is this?" it asked as Steve repeated the call signs.

"Copy that, Steve," the radio crackled back, striking a match in his heart.

"Oh. Oh no. Does Sharon know about this? Sharon definitely doesn't know."

"And we're keeping it that way," Steve retorted. Not that he'd been actively hiding secrets. Half of them he'd forgotten by now anyway. "Hey, Buck."

"This is unsecured comms! I don't care how dinged up your brain is--"

"Who's with you," Bucky asked guardedly.

"BITS. Got an overnight."

The android craned over to the mic. "Yeah HI BARNES, you're in DEEP SHIT."

"Missed that voice."

"Don't flatter your way out of this--"

"Marvin?" Steve hovered a finger over the stereo control.

"Jesus, no." BITS dropped the semi-faux outrage and folded into a compact pout.

"Overnight, huh? That about the blizzard?"

They fell into a steady patter of small back-and-forth: the weather, truck maintenance, jokes about the food quality. It might've been things he'd said tens of times before but that was okay. It was better than nothing and it passed the time. Another hundred miles under the wheels, the engine running smooth.

"You ever think about going up there?" Bucky asked, eventually shifting the conversation. BITS twitched an appendage.

Up where? But Steve knew. The shuttles, he meant. Where everyone had evacuated after … After … He skirted the edges of that blank vast crater and dread settled heavy on his chest like a physical presence, his heart double-skipping.

"Steve?"

" _Steve!_ " That was BITS.

He slammed back into focus in time to catch a stripe of black dots ahead out the windshield -- shit, _shit_ , debris on the road -- BITS already splayed and bracing against the dashboard. The plow wasn't down and they were coming up too fast to steer around without risking an overturn. Steve hit the brakes far more gently than his adrenaline was screaming to, and watched the odometer drop as the mess approached too rapidly. Jagged metal scraps. He pressed the brake further, knowing he was risking a wheel lock, but praying the rig would keep control.

It hit the front tires like a shotgun going off. The cab shivered and wrenched to the left. Two, three more bangs further behind and the truck wavered off-balance, threatening a tilted skid.

Slow, slower.

He was helpless to the massive physics of the rig, the momentum unalterable at this point. _C'mon, c'mon_.

Steve held the wheel steady and the truck slid ever-so-gently to a halt. Behind them a trail of shredded tire carcasses littered the snow. He exhaled tightly through his teeth. BITS was already unfolding and out the door in a blast of frigid air, leaving behind a cloud of elaborate curses. There were nine spares in the back for just this scenario but the timing in the face of a blizzard made things a little more complicated.

The CB mic dangled from its wire and he snatched it up. "Bucky?"

"Steve? You okay?"

"Hit debris, got a couple blowouts. Gotta go."

"Watch your back."

He returned the mic to its cradle and ducked down, fishing for his goggles where BITS had thrown them on the passenger seat floor. A series of dull knocks hit on the window glass and he glanced up --

What the --?

Another series rang out, rapid-fire, and one of the side mirrors cracked into a spiderweb.

Fuck, bullets. _Fuck_ , BITS!

Scavengers, had to be. And more than one. Steve grabbed his goggles and the gun from under the dash, then thought better of it and lurched into the back of the cab, the staccato assault continuing outside. What a waste of ammo. Where the fuck was-- _There_. His fingers brushed the heavy cloth of his suit discarded between the floor mats and he ripped the satchel of fabric down the center, freeing the miniature glowing reactor core. Steve strapped it against his palm where it pulsed warm with energy.

Tap once, tap twice.

The nanosuit swarmed out all at once with a full-body prickling as millions of parts assembled. He knew he'd worn it before-- not enough to be comfortable, and certainly after America had splintered apart. There was a single blue star in the center of the white suit, the branding mark of the Security Council. His old suit, like the old world, was long gone, a victim of the plunging temperatures and fast-changing times. To be fair, he'd beaten aliens in a dated cotton suit. Then again, he'd been a lot younger.

Steve grabbed the battered shield and rolled from the cab.

"Took you long enough!" BITS scuttled along the underside of the trailer.

Steve counted five scavengers in garishly painted helmets astride snowmobiles, all custom-outfitted. He didn't recognize them, but that didn't count for much. Bullets pinged off the shield and suit. How the hell did they have this much ammo?

"Set down your weapons!" Steve called out the most canned approach line possible. And, predictably, no response. If it was the suit versus bullets, he could do this all day. "This is Council-sanctioned cargo, I'm required to engage defensively if you do not set down your weapons. No one needs to get hurt."

One of the scavengers hauled up a massive piece of equipment from alongside their snowmobile and shouldered it.

 _Gotta be shitting me_.

"Hey, is that a rocket launcher?" BITS asked.

Steve swore. "Last warning!"

The rocket fired and so did a pulse from Steve's suit. They met in a bright explosion that blew real, actual heat back against the tundra, and melted a puddle under the fireball. Enough; he'd given them fair warning and now he was plain mad. Steve whirled out the shield and it caught one, two, three guns. Another pulse upended the rocket launcher's snowmobile, parts flying loose into the snow. The attack died abruptly as the scavengers rushed to one another's aid. One of them kicked the wrecked snowmobile in a fit of inchoate rage and made a crude gesture, taunting.

"Alert: incoming munition," chimed Steve's suit. From where? Christ, how many rocket launchers did this crew have? He whirled in time to spot a scavenger who'd crawled undetected around the rig and who had just lobbed a grenade towards the cab. Fucking--

"Aw hell," BITS said and cartwheeled to intercept the grenade. It bounced back into the snow and beeped:

EMP. What the hell.

BITS froze and toppled into a haphazard pile of parts, then Steve's suit was retracting and fuck it was cold. Half the nanobots still clung to his parka and half trickled into the snow. The subzero temps stung his exposed eyes and nose and ripped into his lungs. The mini reactor strapped to his hand flickered as it tried to reboot. Meanwhile two scavengers attacked the back of the rig with a vengeance and a third went for the fuel tanks. The cargo locks wouldn't hold forever.

“Take him in, take him in!” someone shouted, and Steve realized they meant _him_. So this wasn’t just a smash and grab.

Steve moved to retrieve the shield from where it had dropped and a gun safety clicked.

He stared back into the dark visor of a scavenger's helmet. The arc reactor’s feeble whine gained strength. "Do it or not. But those supplies aren't for you."

"They are now."

“Don’t kill him,” another muttered as they surrounded him.

The gun barrel shifted incrementally away from Steve's head, and a bullet destined for his shoulder instead pinged off the rapidly rebooting suit. He grabbed the gun and slammed it back into the helmet, sending the scavenger stumbling. Another EMP grenade launched towards him and he caught it mid-air, crushing it before emission. Steve flung the shield and caught the grenade-wielding scavenger broadside, knocked out. The one who'd trained a gun on him ran to their fallen comrade with a cry and the knot of would-be thieves scattered from the back of the truck, taking whatever they'd managed to siphon from the fuel tank. 

The scavenger shook with rage, propping up the injured, as Steve approached. Blood froze on the ground.

"They'll be all right. Concussed, but all right." Steve held out his hand. "Give me the EMPs." They were too dangerous a weapon to leave circulating. Bullets were one thing, comms and generator disruptions entirely another.

The scavenger was defiant still. "Used up."

Steve shook his head. "There's a blizzard coming. You want a snowmobile that works or you want to try building an igloo?"

"Fuck you," the scavenger spat again, but they untied a satchel of grenades from the snowmobile.

"Who are you with? Hydra?"

"Fuck Hydra too. You got what you wanted. Go run your route like a good little boy scout."

Steve considered rising to the bait, but it was all so tiring, the weariness like a chasm through his chest. And it was true, wasn’t it? Let them hate him. He probably deserved it. The scavenger hobbled to their snowmobile as Steve turned the EMPs over in his hand. BITS and Sharon could analyze the parts later.

Shit, BITS.

The android was still where it had fallen, dark and silent. Something fried. He sighed and gathered the android in his arms, piling it into the cab as the buzz of snowmobiles faded. Everything was out of order. He checked the time and then his notebook. Fix the tires first, then radio the outpost and get to the overpass shelter.

Steve worked diligently, the exertion sending pricks of sweat down his back and through his scalp under the suit. His fingers numbed on the last tire and the suit's visor frosted over. With half the fuel and stops to make tomorrow, he'd need to rely on the cracked auxiliary unit during the storm. Not ideal.

By the time he bundled into the cab and retracted the suit, tiny flakes struck at the windshield and the cab groaned with a gust from the west. Radio the outpost. Right. The engine started with a dry rattling complaint and he pressed the emergency button. Better late than never.

"Nomad on the road, come in Albany Outpost."

Sharon's voice replied instantly; she must've been waiting up for a check-in. "Copy, Nomad. Status?"

"Scavenger ambush took out a couple tires, half the diesel. Rig sustained superficial damage. No stolen surplus. EMP grenade got BITS."

"Injuries?"

"Nothing serious, got one pretty hard with the shield."

"Not them, you."

"I'm fine, Outpost. BITS is fried."

"Try a manual reboot, plug him in to the system and see if he recharges overnight. Write that down."

"Already got it," Steve muttered, scribbling a note to himself.

"How far are you from the overpass?"

"I can make it."

"You better; storm's coming up fast."

"Roger that. Nomad out."

Steve rummaged through the center console, searching for the cable charger he knew must be in the cab somewhere. The glove compartment presented the pill box and he paused. His knee ached dully from changing the tires. Had he taken one today? Fuck it, figure it out later. He pushed it aside and spied the cable charger stuffed towards the back. Steve cranked up the heat, plugged BITS into the system outlet, and nosed the rig west towards the overpass, the landscape swiftly vanishing under a torrent of snow.


	6. Chapter 6

Run DMC. Britney Spears. The Rolling Stones. Chavez sorted through CDs, tapes, and the rare vinyl record or two in the sagging cardboard box, one of tens stacked along her bunk room wall, all hauled from local buried chain stores. Most were cracked and warped, unusable. Sometimes she saved the little inserts if they weren't molded. The good ones she cataloged and uploaded, because none of this could go with them.

She paused, one eye on her networked computer console. Barnes parked his snowmobile on the garage surveillance feed. No radio with him this time. Maybe spare parts in his backpack for one of his endless projects. She glanced beside her where Rambeau was sunk into a beaten orange futon, deftly navigating a Skrull mechanical diagram.

"How was Barnes?" Chavez asked.

Rambeau shrugged a shoulder.

"He seems more off than usual."

Rambeau carefully set the holographic generator aside. She folded her hands gently over her sweatshirt, gun callouses interlacing, and settled her gaze on Chavez. Most people found it unnerving, cold and blank. Chavez thought it more like a clear, still pool. There was so much under the surface.

"You're worried about Barnes because it was your call to bring him on."

Chavez pursed her lips. “He knows your ability.”

“He knows I can hurt him.”

More than hurt him. But they had to be careful with their secrets. Tomorrow was the Southern equinox, harbinger of change. The system was tugging at her but she didn't know why. Laying this all out to Nick would earn her That Look, the one that meant she was reading too far into things. _Head in the stars but keep it on your shoulders._

"Our business is recovering Dani and delivering Hummingbird," Rambeau continued. "What happens to Barnes and his business, that's between him and God and you-know-who. I’m not touching that mess."

Chavez huffed a short laugh. They were mission partners for a reason. Ruthless dedication, loyalty. Of course it came with a price; that was the nature of the work. Space travel like theirs was lonely; it made you a chosen exile from community. It was less lonely with a trusted ally, and if you found one you held them close, protected that bond above all else. So maybe she understood why Barnes fell asleep by the ham radio most nights.

"Do you think Danielle follows through?" Chavez chewed on her thumbnail thoughtfully.

Rambeau considered. "Enough of a chance."

It should've been a no-brainer. Who the hell would want to stay on such a desolate planet? Then again, Chavez had never been afraid to leave a place behind. She'd been born into transition, sent searching and rootless through many would-be homes before finding this one. For someone like Danielle, the Puritans were safety; it was all she'd known for over a decade, like so many other children scattered and separated during the impact. Dreaming of running away was a fantasy that only a few really, truly followed through. Confronted with action, the reality of space travel, the pain of rupture, the potential finality? It was why so many had starved and frozen to death on Earth even as room opened up on evac shuttles.

“How’s Luke doing?”

“Like you’d expect. All that time searching… Wilson’s worried if the extraction fails he might take out the whole compound and fuck up the network.”

“No pressure, got it.”

Rambeau cracked her knuckles and Chavez waited for whatever she was mulling. “I want to try again. You grounding.”

Chavez's stomach dropped to her toes. “Not now, not here.”

“You’re afraid,” Rambeau calmly accused her.

“Of course I’m afraid. You were gone--”

"You keep saying that. I wasn't. I was there, Merry. I know I can do this."

“If I let you go and you don't come back, if I can’t bring you back? It’ll kill me too. I can’t take that burden.” She fingered the necklace again, up and down along the chain.

Rambeau noticed and shook her head. “This is about me and us, not about your ma.”

“What, like these missions aren’t about yours?” Chavez shot back, and it was a low blow. She grimaced. “Sorry. That was out of line.”

Rambeau's gaze stayed steady. “No, let’s go there. I think about my ma in that shitty hospice ward, still talking about how Carol Danvers is gonna come back and take care of me and shoot roses out of her ass, make everything better. I don’t lie to these kids on these missions like that. We give them an option, and their choices don’t change anything in my past. Their family reunions aren’t about my failures or successes. But with you, everything’s gotta be personal. I’m telling you to trust me, that I can do this, and all you hear is your own fear, your own past.”

Chavez let go of the necklace chain to lay a hand over Rambeau’s and felt the stinging snap of electricity like a tug on her heartstrings. They gained nothing by reopening each others’ old wounds, stories familiar as scars.

Onward and upward.

“I’ll think about it. That enough for now?”

Rambeau’s bitter expression eased. Far from placated but it was the most Chavez could offer.

***  


Steve set his wind-up alarm clock and a note for the morning hour when he'd need to switch from auxiliary to his remaining fuel. If the APU failed during the night, well, then he wouldn't need the alarm. He set aside his notebook, having skimmed through the most recent notes, some copied from older entries, enduring cryptic mysteries that waited to jog a memory. The wind howled in frustration around the corner of the overpass where he sheltered,swaying the cab and trailer. He clicked off the overhead light, pulled up a blanket, and was left with the soft hushing of the heater vents. BITS was motionless in the passenger seat, piled in the concavity of the shield, a small blinking yellow light indicating that it was slowly and surely recharging via the cable port. It was too quiet, the wind outside too loud, the world too frigid and dark through the frosted windshield. It would've been nice to have BITS's annoying patter.

Steve was drawn back to the CB radio. It was late, he was a sitting duck here, he should keep the line open for Sharon.

His craving for contact overrode everything. He changed the station.

"Break, one seven. Nomad on the road." Pause. "Bucky, you out there?"

He waited five minutes, repeated. Again. The sheer isolation pressed in on him and the cab's heat made his layers suffocating, the space small and cluttered. He pressed his forehead against the top of the wheel and breathed.

"Steve? Yeah, I'm here-- I'm here," came through breathlessly.

"Sorry, it's late."

"No, no, it's fine. Everything patched up?"

How'd he know about-- Oh, right. Their earlier chat. "Yeah, only needed to change four tires. BITS is rebooting, so we're spared the running commentary."

"Rebooting?"

"Long day." Steve closed his eyes and saw the context-less happy photograph in his bunk room. Maybe it was the off-kilter day or the residual adrenaline high or small puzzle pieces from his notebook slotting together, scraps of dreams, that made him wander off the beaten path next. "Can I ask you something that's maybe a little… odd." He swallowed hard, throat clicking.

"You can ask me anything, Steve."

"Are we together?"

A pause. "Yeah." Unequivocally. No hemming or hawing or embarrassment. Just simple fact.

Steve exhaled. What the mind forgot, the body remembered. It wasn't fair, the forgetting. He strained for a fragment, anything, cataloged rapid-fire every well-worn moment he'd always been able to recall from childhood up through … Then the bizarre fragments of scenes real or imagined, too nonsensical to hold and examine, the neural highway disintegrating until the world became like it was now. He opened his eyes and they rested on the compass, rotating slowly in the vent-blown air.

When, how long, how did it happen, did you kiss me first or was it me pulling you, how well do we know one another in the dark-- Steve suspected well enough the answers to these questions and more. How much would it hurt Bucky to hear them asked? To confirm that all this had been lost, too?

"You don't owe me anything," Bucky said, to fill the silence Steve let expand.

"I'm sorry." He could count on two hands the number of times he'd said the words, far less than he should've and still more than he ever wanted to. "It's all fucked up."

"Hey. Hey, I know. Hand to god, I fucking know," Bucky scoffed darkly.

Steve recalled a memory so clear and present it could've been yesterday: turning the key in his new Brooklyn apartment, flicking the light switch, illuminating Bucky sitting in his living room like an apparition. Except he wasn't a ghost, not anymore. He could've passed for a normal civilian. Under the stubble his face ruddy fresh from the evening's windy streets, hair pulled back. In a single moment Steve sketched him a hundred times in his mind, in case he'd vanish in the next. Bucky had held himself taunt, the lines of his body apprehensive under no less than four layers of assorted jackets and a hoodie. Guarded, defensive. There was a Sig Sauer with a silencer aimed straight at Steve's face, a fact that registered only after he'd taken two steps forward, heart leaping. "Do you know who I am?" Steve had rasped, one answer away from losing his grip on sanity.

It was the same way for him now, in a dark truck at the end of the world. Maybe his sanity was already lost. There was so much he wanted to say, none of it adequate.

So Steve pressed the button on the mic and said the first thing that came to mind. "Remember when my ma first got sick, in the beginning, and you let me pick a fight with Gerry McDonald right out front of the nickel and dime store."

"Oh, Jesus. Yeah, Bulldozer McDonald."

"Knocked out a molar and had a black eye for a week. Split your knuckles pulling him off me and your hand swelled up so bad you had to call off work and missed your wages.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, that was when I first loved you."

Pause. Then, low and hoarse: "Yeah, a real Brooklyn romantic."

"When will I see you again?"

"Soon. I swear."

There was more left unsaid and it sent up a red warning flag, twisting sourness in Steve's gut. _Don't do anything stupid._ He itched to grab the shield and _go_ , whatever that meant, because it should be both of them facing the opposition together. But he was stuck in a rig in a blizzard, probably hundreds of miles away from wherever Bucky was, with a slipshod memory and bum knee. He massaged the tendons around his kneecap, stiff from the exertion of the tire changes. Then let his hand run further up to where his parka was unzipped, his body soft and heavy under the coveralls and sweater and long johns, and tried to imagine Bucky's hands doing the same. It sparked low in his groin. The body remembered. He took a shaky breath before pressing the mic button again.

"So a Brooklyn romantic, huh? What, uh, what does that mean for a fella." Steve cringed; this had certainly never been his strong suit.

He heard the smile in Bucky's reply. "Stubborn, for one. A big mouth."

"Sounds like a real winner. Big mouth, huh? Maybe useful though." Steve cleared his throat again, his voice dropping lower. "For, uh, other things." He sounded ridiculous to himself and felt his cheeks flushing hot in the dark. A glance to his right confirmed BITS was still deactivated.

"Are you …?" Bucky halted.

"Sorry," Steve hastily apologized for the second time in a single conversation, a personal record. "This is-- This is dumb." He licked his lips. "Right?"

"No, I-- Believe me, I like it. I like it a lot." Steve waited while Bucky searched for the words. "Do you want to?"

Did he? There was so much he didn't know about them, like a stranger had had a relationship in his absence. He rested his head against the frozen window glass and gazed out, the snow a swirling white blur, erasing existence around him. But his heart thrummed in his chest and buzzed down to his toes with fond excitement, a rightness and surety missing so often these days. Maybe this wasn't such a lost mystery after all.

"I think I just want to be warm again," Steve murmured.

"Yeah. Yeah, okay."

Steve caught the hint of a tremble as Bucky's voice ran deep and ragged. The low spark strengthened and spread, and he fumbled clumsily for a moment to unbuckle his coveralls, shove them down roughly against his thighs with the long johns, his cock bobbing free against the wool of the blanket. He spit into his free hand.

"Tell me what to do," Steve breathed, and closed his eyes tight.

The low rumble of Bucky's voice, Brooklyn drawl creeping into his cadence, the stutters and halts and sighs and groans between the hiss of background static. He surrendered to it and followed blindly, instinctively, wholly consumed by the here-and-now urgency of the present. Sweat slid down the insides of his thighs and he spit again, hips canting up helplessly. It felt good. His breath came shorter, harder, biting back an involuntary whine. Bucky surrounded him, the universe contracted to the cocoon of his voice. _What do you need, Steve, say it, wanna hear you say it, say it and I'll give it to you_ \--

"Yes, god, _please_ ," Steve strangled out, barely knowing there was a button to press and release, his lips slack. He quivered on the edge.

_You're so good, Steve, so good, ah_ \--

He'd already pumped out across the underside of the blanket and his stomach in thick stripes before Bucky descended into a short guttural moan but the sound still wrung a fresh spurt from him. Steve lay there panting for a minute, five minutes, time was irrelevant. He was sticky, wet, and floating in an oozy warm haze of endorphines.

"Thanks," he said, stupid-drunk.

Bucky replied with a shaky laugh, light and bashful. Steve's mouth may be bigger but Bucky's had always been dirtier. "Some sick fuck probably heard that whole performance on their CB."

"Land of the free, Buck."

Silence as they both caught their breath, circling down from the high.

"I miss you."

"Yeah. I miss you too."

There were many people Steve missed without remembering exactly who or why, like a general dull ache, and it was a singular comfort to keep one steadily in mind. "Night, Buck."

"Goodnight, Steve."

After, Steve wiped himself with the blanket and balled it into a far corner, grabbing a fresh one from the back. He thought about writing a note to clean it later but ah, fuck it. He'd figure it out. He pissed into an empty plastic water bottle, checked the time, and fell fast asleep.

***

He awoke in a jumble to persistent banging on the driver's door. The windows were whited out with frost and his breath hung in a cloud in front of his face. He brushed thin icicles from his beard and blinked. Don't panic. Where are you. The truck. Outside. What had he been-- That wasn't his alarm--

"Oh thank god you aren't dead," BITS craned over him and Steve reflexively threw a punch that sent the android sprawling back into the passenger seat. The banging intensified.

"Hey, open up!" Someone was yelling.

"What?" Steve blinked, bewildered. Mental alarms blared: This wasn't the routine.

Attack. They were under attack. In a daze he slipped on the glove and let the nanosuit assemble over him, only half-understanding BITS's debriefing, something about the APU and an overnight and scavengers, ah fuck. The pounding on the door went directly into his skull.

"Don't open the--!"

Too late. Steve flung open the cab door, a coating of ice cracking and sloughing, and caught the would-be intruder solidly in the shoulder. He stepped out and immediately sank into at least three feet's worth of freshly powdered snow that had drifted against the overpass. An errant gust of wind rocked his balance even in the suit. Right, sheltering. He recalled the scavenger attack from the prior afternoon like a movie watched through a mirror in a different room.

The scavenger raised their hands in surrender before Steve could make another move. He looked around.

"It's just me," the scavenger said, their helmet markings suspiciously familiar. Wait a minute…

"Weren’t you one of the crew who shot up my truck and tried to kidnap me?"

“Not totally my idea. Look, hear me out first.”

“This a trap?”

“If it was, would I fucking tell you?”

"Fair enough. Talk." Steve noticed their ragged parka was stiff with cold, boots patched with electrical tape.

"Inside?"

"Convince me."

The scavenger pulled off their helmet and beneath the thick balaclava it was a woman, cheekbones gaunt and sharp, lips chapped and split. The air was freezing on bare skin but she bore it stoically. In ten minutes or less she'd get frostbite. She knew as much; her nose was missing cartilage. "Inside, or you're just as rotted as everyone says."

That stopped him short. She was scrappy. "All right. In."

BITS whirred in agitation as the woman leapt into the cab. "Hi. Hello. Make yourself at home," the android skulked, maneuvering into the cot space. "Rogers, we don't have time for this on the schedule and as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, we're already on the diesel as of twenty minutes ago."

Steve closed the door again with a _whumph_ , cutting off the searing cold as his suit retracted. The schedule. He glanced at the dashboard clock but the itinerary was all jumbled without looking at his notebook, which was somewhere strewn about the cab. _This wasn't part of the routine_ , his mind screamed over and over, and he shook his head once, twice, to force it to heel. The woman watched him.

"Talk," he muttered.

"We need help--"

"We? Thought it was just you."

"Our homestead's under siege."

"Scavengers don’t have licensed homesteads, you're outside Security Council purview."

"You used to be an outlaw too. Fucked the rules, fucked SHIELD."

There was a name he hadn't heard in a while. "You have a rocket launcher."

"They have more. And you stole our EMP grenades."

"Confiscated, and you're not getting them back. I don’t get involved in turf wars--"

"Turf wars? It's a slaughter campaign. Wake up," she spat angrily. "I'm down here for theft and fraud, okay? Others, they're down here because they like to torture and murder. And as long as they're not on a licensed homestead, the Council doesn't give a fuck. But you, Pete always vouched for you. He thought, if we were ever in bad trouble, that we could reach out for help. He said you'd remember Hydra."

The word hit him like a slap. She was good. Persuasive. Appealing to all his fundamental instincts. But the allure of his familiar routine tugged him back. This job he could perform with an assured confidence. He wasn't Captain America anymore; hadn't been for a long, long time.

"I’m not who I used to be. Brain worked a lot better, for one. For two…" He gestured at himself.

She held his gaze. "No one’s the same as they were. You still care, or I wouldn't be in this cab." She nudged the shield. "And neither would this."

Steve reluctantly granted her that much. What was the worst that could happen? That he might lose himself, his mind, and fail because he was too bumbling and befuddled and just plain old broken-down? The uncertainty, the unknown … Fear. He was afraid.

He could forget this conversation. He might go on, blissfully unaware of an even greater failing.

He mulled it over. Thought about explaining how these things didn’t matter, that eventually all of it would come to an end just the same. Could he give her that despairing message, true as it may be to him, and send her back outside?

Had the road taken him so far off course?

Well … No.

No, that wouldn't do.

In the sharp clarity of a breaking point his heart sparked with exhilaration. Maybe she was right; maybe he wasn't so different.

He nodded, everything falling into place as if his mind had been waiting for him to make a decision. He could still make a plan off-the-cuff, who knew. "BITS, Knox homestead is due in three hours, I know Sharon programmed the route to you."

The woman smiled.

BITS whirred into action, aghast. "Steve, you can't be serious. I mean, yes, sure, I can drive -- pretty well, actually, not that anyone's ever asked -- but if you traipse off into the wilderness with a scavenger, Sharon’ll send me to the scrapyard."

Steve was already collecting his sparse provisions into his overnight knapsack. Protein bars, compass. "Sharon won't blame you. Tell her the truth, when you get to Knox. That it was my call, whatever happens."

"Yeah, well, it's a horrible call." BITS went for the CB emergency button but Steve blocked the appendage, which sparked in protest. "Hey hey hey watch the circuitry!"

"You heard her. You know it's the right move. Compute it."

"I'm programmed to offer resistance to idiocy. Although your present behavior seems to be adhering closer to your historical baseline, which is to say, volatile as fuck. The algorithm suggests a high probability that I reluctantly acquiesce. God damn it." BITS turned to the woman. "And to where are you kidnapping him, then?"

"South," she allowed.

"That’s it? Just, ‘south’?”

Steve went to pack up a blanket stowed in the corner and quickly set it back down with an embarrassed cough. Right. About last night. Shit, Bucky. He lurched back to the CB and switched the channel. "Break one seven, Buck, you there?"

BITS swiveled indignantly. "Oh sure, _you_ get to use the radio."

C'mon, c'mon. "Buck, this is Nomad. It's urgent." It was outside the normal hours. He pointed a finger at BITS.

"Keep it open, in case."

“In case I want to log a policy violation talking to your boyfriend?”

"Bucky … Barnes?" The woman guessed.

Fuck. Steve ignored it and shoved the suit into his knapsack before pulling on his balaclava stashed under the seat. His beard prickled against the fabric.

"Let's go." He grabbed the shield and patted the steering wheel. “Take care of her, BITS.”

“Take care of yourself, Rogers. Can’t wait till Sharon hears this story,” BITS griped, unfolding into the vacated driver’s seat and playing a gentle Taps tune.

The wind swirled up the snow around them as they trudged to her snowmobile. She handed him a spare scavenger helmet, graffiti-ed with a FUCK THE S.C. and a weirdly sexual skeleton. "Six hours. Buckle up, Captain."

"Hey, I didn't catch your name. Can't promise I won't forget though." He strapped on the helmet and slid down the visor, straddling the back of the snowmobile.

"Call me MJ. Your friendly neighborhood troublemaker."

She settled in and Steve was struck by the strangeness of close physical presence. Had he been this alone that long? The snowmobile coughed to life and he wrapped a steadying hand around the back seat bar. She handled the extra weight with an ease that belied her strength and pointed them due south. Steve spared a glance as the truck slowly, then quickly, disappeared into the snowy haze, like shedding a weight. He'd forgotten the notebook, and his pillbox, he realized too late.

***

Bucky unwrapped the transmitter booster chip from its hidden pocket on the warm inner sleeve of his parka and placed it on the table in front of Rumlow.

"This better not be traceable." Rumlow hacked a yellow gob of phlegm and gestured for Bucky to follow him.

They strode through the emptied airport's skeleton to a door marked Authorized Access Only, once busted through and now padlocked. Inside was a comms system surprising in its advancement and upkeep. Two gaunt men turned at their entrance, and Rumlow handed the chip over.

Connecting off-Earth required clearance and signal strength that was rare these days unless you were in an Outpost. The Security Council-issued booster chip would grant them both. A narrow time slot of no more than ten minutes, including connection setup. Bucky checked his watch. Eight to go.

The video conferencing monitor fizzed with static, then resolved all at once. An old man floated too close to the screen with a full face, white hair tied back in a ragged ponytail, the interior lights of the space module harsh on his complexion.

"That him?" Rumlow asked.

"Yeah, it's me," Foggy Nelson replied impatiently, squinting. "You gotta be Rumlow. And … Bucky Barnes? Huh. It's been a while since I've seen a celebrity. So, what, you need a lawyer? I'm retired."

"Shutup, we only got seven minutes. Rumor was you heard something funny about the impact. There was a stone, a necklace? "

"That's what this is about?" Nelson's eyebrows climbed his forehead before his expression darkened. "Uh huh, all right then," he muttered. "Way back, we had an old friend, worked as a nurse in Hell's Kitchen. She was a very practical lady, no nonsense. A good person. The rock hits and everything went to shit. So then, oh, maybe five years later, I'm working evac appeals cases, and uh, well." He paused, eyes distant. "She found me. She was still alive after everything, somehow. But she wasn't the same Claire. I mean …" He sighed. "She started going on about this thing she had, how it let her see the future. Really off-the-wall stuff. Telling me she dies on such-and-such date and time, the whole nine yards. She wasn't well. I tried to give her a psych referral and that was the last we spoke," he said, regret still evident.

"And this thing she had, it was a stone?"

Nelson rubbed his face. "The way she told it, that day in downtown she tried to save a man's life and it wasn't going. This guy … This guy slows down time, like everything just stops, and he gives her an amulet, tells her to keep it safe."

"So she still has it?"

"Couldn't say. Claire died a few years back, radiation." Nelson lifted his hands in a resigned motion and watched them, story concluded.

"Fuck," Rumlow said.

Two minutes left.

"You believe it, don't you? You really think there was some magical time-machine rock."

"Yeah, we did."

Nelson leaned back, calculating. "Say you could find it. And if -- _if_ \-- it works. Then what, you go back and stop the impact?"

"Something like that." Rumlow hesitated. "You sly little shit. One minute. Give me something and I'll set young Foggy Nelson up with a fortune, house in the Hamptons, whatever you want."

"That's a nice lie from an ugly face. You have no idea what I want. But yeah, I got something." He lifted his wrist and rolled down the jumpsuit sleeve a fraction, revealing two parallel strings of numbers tattooed across the veins. Coordinates, Bucky recognized.

"Grab that screenshot," Rumlow barked. "What are those?"

"Claire died right how she called it, date and time. See you on the flip side, scavenger."

The feed cut.

"Coordinates," one of the techs said, retrieving the booster chip. Smart son of a bitch.

"Pull 'em up, now," Rumlow snapped.

Bucky already knew. New York. New York City. Specifically …

"You gotta be fucking me. That's Stark Tower. Place is a dead zone!"

Bucky smiled to himself. Where else might a normal citizen stow a powerful time-travelling amulet? No one monitored the cities, deserted and looted burning cesspools. She could've buried it in the mountains or flung it into the later-frozen Hudson, but Stark Tower -- Avengers Tower -- was high-profile enough to hold out the chance that someday, someone might want to recover the Eye. Hiding in plain sight.

"Safest spot on the Eastern seaboard."

Rumlow fixed him with a baleful glare. "Guess this makes you our lucky ticket in, Soldier."

Bucky sized up the two techs, Rumlow. The room was small enough to play to his advantage in hand-to-hand combat, buy a few seconds to release the machete strapped under his parka. Could he kill? The Hydra programming had run deep: the asset does not destroy itself, the asset does not destroy its fellow property.

Incapacitating, on the other hand…

Rumlow grinned.

"Say, this a good time to mention I took out a little insurance policy for myself."

What. "What?"

"You've been naughty, stowing your GPS at a scrapyard to go play with Hydra. Think they'd terminate you for that? Be a shame. Almost off parole, too. Fuck with me and that evidence gets beamed up direct."

Bucky's blood ran cold and his left fingers twitched. Sloppy, Barnes, you let him get the leverage. _Stupid, stupid._

"If I go down, so do you," he bit out spitefully.

"Now he's getting it!" Rumlow tapped his watch. "Pack your shit, we ride out tomorrow. Tick-tock."

***

"Break, one-seven. Nomad, you out there? … This is Bucky, come in Nomad."

"This is Nomad."

"BITS, put Steve on."

"Come on, that impression was perfect! What, not enough melancholic gravitas? My vocal synthesizer sounds different over this thing."

"Where's Steve?"

"Sharon's programmed me to remind you that a successful launch is the number one priority and all timelines are proceeding normally. Nomad's on homestead business, so don't get your panties in a bunch. Ok, that last phrase I added for effect."

"Sounds like her. Look, something came up and I gotta sign off for a while. When he gets back, can you tell him … Just, say I was thinking of him."

"A bouquet of roses will be ten dollars extra."

"Did Sharon program you to say that too?"

"I am a font of originality, Barnes. Message copied."

***

Chavez glanced up as Barnes joined her in the comms room. It was getting late in the day and most of the outpost's daily data sync was done. A verification program ran in the background, testing the electrical mating between the outpost launch command module and the shuttle's onboard system. She pushed back from the screen and waited for Barnes to explain the black cloud shadowing his expression.

"Sergeant Barnes," she prompted.

Barnes remained at parade rest, weirdly formal given the circumstances, and Chavez rose to her feet behind the comms desk. Whatever this was, she didn't intend to take it sitting down.

He looked her in the eye. "Request permission to take leave, effective immediately."

"Denied," she said out of reflex, out of disbelief. Was this it, was this the troublesome encounter the system had been tugging her towards all month? She could take Barnes in a fight but it wouldn't be pretty, and certainly not in the comms room. "What the fuck?"

"Push the launch. Give me an extra five, six hours. If this is a dead end, I'll be back, I promise."

"If what's a dead end? You already got one unsanctioned mission, wanna tell me about another?"

Barnes shook his head, jaw clenching. "Respectfully, no, Captain."

"Respectfully," she repeated, and gave him a look usually reserved for especially disgusting insects. Anger bubbled up in her chest like a slow boil. The nerve of this guy. "So you come in here to request permission for some secret business you're gonna do anyway. That's respectful? Huh." Chavez was firm: “The launch stays. You tell Rambeau?"

"No."

_Coward_ , she thought. "Then I guess that'll be my pleasure," she said. "Gotta admit, I didn't think you'd bail on Danielle. The Council said you always complete their missions. And yet here you are, for us, fucking off."

He grimaced and looked away, took a moment to recompose himself. "But if there was a way to fix all this, everything--"

"Everything? You really mean everything? Are you thinking about Dani and those other kids like her out there? Or do you mean Steve? It's all about Steve with you. Always has been, Wilson said. He know about this?"

"No."

"Uh huh. Let me tell you something, Barnes. There's no fixing. Spare your own teacup and another shatters; entropy finds an outlet. So yeah, take leave, if you want to call it that. Be back by launch or I file what it really is: desertion. You got a lot of intel on us, but don't think that means I owe you favors. Dismissed."

"America--"

"It's Captain, and I truly mean get the fuck out. That's a direct order. Or are you gonna ignore that too?"

Chavez sat back heavily and stared through the numbers ticking across the computer monitors until the door closed again behind Barnes. Then waited for the roiling fury of betrayal to calm enough for her to think through it. She should've pushed back harder. And what? Fucked up the comms room, probably taken a few bullets, set the whole Council up her ass in the aftermath? No. Pick your battles.

The verification program chimed: electrical mating complete. The truth was they didn't depend on Barnes for extraction or liftoff. Let him run his mysterious wild goose chase. The Council's most catered-to ex-assassin, parole or not. It was quintessentially unfair that so many on Earth had perished horrifically in their youth, their prime, whole lives ahead of them, and yet two super soldiers reached their centennials. The ultimate privilege. She'd made a mistake bringing Barnes into it. Rambeau and Wilson had warned her.

There was a crunching sound and she looked down to the crumpled computer mouse.

The door opened. So help him if--

"Carter's on line three, urgent. It's about Rogers," Rambeau said.

"Oh fuck me," Chavez muttered, as she watched Barnes peel out of the garage on the surveillance feed.


	7. Chapter 7

"Hey."

He jerked awake with his whole body, all at once, and didn't know where he was, who he was, for a disturbing moment. He's a child, he's in the ice, he's in the Tower with Bucky, no -- No. A furtive rest stop. An old apartment building, top floors clearing the tundra.

"Let's go. Gotta hit the pass before it gets dark." MJ screwed the gas cap back on her snowmobile and kicked snow over the embers of their campfire.

Steve blinked. The dream stuck with him for once. Bucky after the Raft, standing in his Tower apartment-- _Home isn’t always a place_. But it wasn’t just a dream, was it? That had really happened.

"I remember," Steve said, wonderingly, speaking it into existence as if to confirm that this too wasn't also a dream. It was like he'd been looking for his lost keys for days only to find he'd been holding them the whole time.

MJ shot him a look. "Yeah? Were you always this weird? C'mon, we gotta move."

The hidden sunset lit the low clouds with a pale weak glow, night gaining in the east. The mountain pass was steep and iced, and they dodged remnants of rockfalls as the trail wound precipitously. Descending into the valley below, a grotesque sculpture reared on the horizon, creeping closer as they ate up ground.

"What the hell is that thing," Steve shouted to MJ's helmet over the din of the engine.

She slowed as they passed the ensemble. A medley of skulls was strung together with wire to the top of an old telephone pole, assorted longer arm and leg bones clacking on trailing strands like a windchime from hell. "Hydra," she said. "We're close to the front line."

Steve watched the skeletal totem recede into the distance where it was consumed by encroaching darkness.

  
***

  
 _Then_ _  
  
_

Bucky stared straight up at the ceiling, jaw clenched so tightly Steve feared he would crack a tooth. His body was a rigid line of tension.

"Jesus Christ, do you mind?" Tony snapped, pausing with two tiny pliers holding two different wires between the clean metal plates of Bucky's left arm. "You are literally, actually, physically, breathing down my neck, Cap."

Steve leaned back a fraction against the work station, arms crossed. Tony's music was half its normal volume but a persistent drum beat and wailing guitar still wound its way up his spine in a coil of anxiety.

"Philips. Wait. Yes," Tony muttered to the tiny robot at his elbow.

No one spoke again as time dragged on, Steve nervously jogging a knee until Tony shot him a glare.

Then, abruptly, Tony plucked out the vise and the plates slipped back together, the entire arm shivering with an automatic recalibration that made Bucky jerk and then wince.

"That's it," Tony announced, and cracked his neck with an audible pop.

"That's it?" Steve stood to attention.

"How's it feel, Tin Man?"

Bucky sat up and curled his arm, flexing his fingers tentatively. "Fine."

Tony scoffed. "Uh, understatement? Don't insult me. Touch something. Here." He tossed Bucky a tiny office basketball from the cluttered desk.

He caught it one-handed, whip-fast, and then stopped cold, lips parting. His metal fingers played over it quickly, tossed it in the air. Bucky smiled. "I can … I can feel it? How?"

"A minor sensory input upgrade I've been tinkering with for a few weeks, well, okay more like a mere ten months, but only because the existing Russian tech -- and really, calling it tech is generous -- was an absolute disaster."

"It's incredible, Tony. Thank you."

"If only Pepper would say the same thing. Now if you'll excuse me, I need my masseuse. And … don't touch anything on this work bench. There's an explosive booby-trap there somewhere, probably."

Bucky set down the basketball and ran his hand along his cotton tank top, the soft sweatpants. "Steve," he said, holding out his hand.

Steve chuckled at his childlike wonder, and moved closer to gently, tentatively, meet Bucky's palm with his fingertips. The metal was warm from the workbench lamp. Bucky folded his fingers over Steve's, exploring the knuckles, the shield calluses that always stayed somewhere between half-formed and half-healed, then shifted lower to the tendons across the back of his hand, the bones of his wrist, around to the pulse-point of veins and arteries on the soft pale underside, the creases in his palm like a reader at the fair might do to tell his future. The last time Steve had held hands with anyone was seventy years ago. The future was still surprising him with new possibilities. It was nice, to be touched gently like this, with such care and presence.

Bucky's hand dropped away only to reach up and muss his hair, a playful swipe that sprung from childhood. Steve startled, fond and easy. "Need a haircut."

"Speak for yourself."

"Nah, I'm going full beatnik now. Army discharge."

"Oh the press is gonna love that."  
  


*

  
Bucky picked up his to-go coffee from the counter, removed the generic flimsy lid, and gave its steam a slow inhale, poker-faced, before joining Steve on the rainy sidewalk. It was an early Sunday, early enough their most frequent company would be joggers and the elderly church crowd.

"Six point five," Bucky said, having sipped the coffee.

"It's all just black coffee, Buck, it all tastes the same."

"That's because the 21st century's dulled your senses with sugar and cream and syrup. It's a man's brew, not a dessert, Rogers."

"A man's brew, you know the 21st century frowns on sexism."

"A man isn't limited to male anatomy, I've been told things are very gender-fluid."

"I don't think that's what that means."

"I can't believe you've spent years in the future being as square as possible."

"You're the real square."

"That's your best comeback? 'You're the real square?' You know Archie Potts would laugh his ass off if you said that to him. He wouldn't even bother throwing a punch. I'd be too embarrassed to know you. You ma would lock the door--"

"Jesus, Buck, quit riding my ass, it's not even seven yet."

"Riding America's ass, now that's progressive--"

Bucky cut short as they passed an old Italian couple outside St. Paul's. They walked the next few blocks in silence, closer now to their destination. The groundskeeper was just opening the gates when they reached the cemetery. The Barnes family plot was simple and unadorned. Winnie and George. Rebecca Leigh Proctor, born on this day, deceased May 22, 1962 in a Missouri clover field on Continental Airlines Flight 11. Kim and Scott had already sent flowers and they waved in the rainy breeze, stuck in one of those plastic vases. Steve had met them once at a Smithsonian event. They had Becca's strong chin and cheekbones, families of their own. Maybe now that the merciless press scrutiny had died down, they'd reconnect.

There was a gap between headstones where the state had dug up Bucky's marker; apparently it was against the law to have a cemetery plot if you weren't legally dead, as Steve had discovered years earlier. Two misplaced ghosts. Their lives weren't the natural order of things, and he never felt it more acutely than here, among these markers for the passage of time.

Bucky raised his coffee cup in a silent toast and took a long breath, sinking into the thousand-yard stare he used to have during the Raft and now slipped into during particularly tough VA counseling sessions, or after nightmares when he came into Steve's room and slept on the floor. Maybe he shed tears when Steve wasn't around. Maybe he didn't shed them at all.

  
*

  
"So whose idea was this? Natasha?" Bucky asked as he watched a colorful school of tropical fish swim past, the aquarium light filtering through the top of the central display and across his face in the darkened hall. The Coral Reef Ecosystem, said a placard around the viewing glass. The stub of a child's half-ripped admission ticket lay discarded on the floor.

"Mine," Steve said, secretly pleased and hanging on every flash of wonder.

Bucky's face registered surprise before he dropped to re-lace a boot that, as far as Steve could, didn't need such care.

The first time Steve had been to this aquarium was shortly after he'd officially joined the Avengers. Fundraising for a Save Our Seas non-profit in front of a full court press of media ("Didn't global warming save your life?") and innocently overeager school children. The underwater shark tunnel had nearly triggered a panic attack. This time they had the place to themselves.

"Bet they don't even know," Bucky said, now studying a cluster of sea anemones and their attendant clownfish. "That it's not the real ocean."

Steve considered. "It's the only place they can survive. There's no home left for them in the wild anymore."

Bucky touched the tip of his finger to the glass and a fish paused to investigate. Steve followed the tank as it curved to the opposite side, and studied the placard's write-up about how brain coral could live for 900 years. Maybe he wasn't the oldest thing in this place. A bright yellow fish flashed from a hidden nook and darted away. On the other side of the exhibit the rippling light made Bucky soft, erasing the tension that liked to gather in his jaw and around his eyes. These moments of open gentleness were new and rare.

Bucky was a more-than-competent agent in their training modules, going toe-to-toe against Steve and Natasha if they pushed him, the full skill set of the Winter Soldier at his control. He was rough with Steve, who encouraged it, as if there was some unspoken competition about who might break first, as if either of them would ever. Or to assure themselves over and over again that it wasn't like the highway, the helicarrier. Steve knew what it sounded like to break Bucky's arm, and he carried faint scars from the bullets Bucky had put into him. They'd killed men, and watched men be killed. Brushed death themselves. So much of their shared history was violence.

It was only here, in the ethereal green-blue of the aquarium light, that Steve wondered what it might be like if this version of Bucky was gentle with him.

This version of Bucky that was now looking back at Steve, catching him.

  
*

  
Steve tossed his laundry into the machine with a cursory check of pockets to make sure he didn't wash his bike keys (again) or his Tower badge pass (again). The machine offered a plethora of options. Steve set it to cold water, normal. He'd tried a different setting once and it shrank a sweater to a size more appropriate for his 1920's self. In the absence of missions, this week's load was mostly gym clothes from diligent sparring with Nat and Bucky, Clint and Sam when they felt like goofing off, Tony when he added yet another new mod to a suit.

Steve stopped. These briefs were … not his. He peered closer. A cheerful parade of cartoons that looked like pistachios, cashews … Ah. Nuts. What the?

He dug through the rest of the pile and recovered two spandex tank tops, one pair of mesh gym shorts, and a tee-shirt with a ripped hem on the left sleeve. Assorted remnants of Bucky intermingled in his space like the stray hairs in the drain and the rumpled blanket on the couch. Two magnets circling closer. A sudden blush of embarrassed excitement -- quit standing around holding another man's undergarments, Rogers -- and he threw the clothes in the washer and went to take a cold shower where he studiously did not think about Bucky, no sir. Oh, hell.

  
*

  
"I'm out. Detonator is hot, repeat detonator is hot," Natasha yelled over the comms gone tinny and distorted with volume.

"Falcon clear!" Sam replied with a grunt.

"Rogers, Barnes?"

"Yeah, working on it," Steve groused. The last coterie of Hydra base security was putting up a stubbornly feisty resistance, effectively blocking their exit. Should've brought Sam's spare jetpack, he mused. He waited as Bucky replenished rounds in both guns beside him. They had too much stubbornness in common; if Steve was on a mission then so was Bucky.

"This the part where I ask you what the plan is and you say, what plan?" Bucky muttered, eyeroll hidden behind goggles.

Steve grimaced and pressed against the shipping containers as a fresh burst of gunfire erupted.

"Less than five to clear," Natasha coolly reminded them. She must've made it onto the quinjet.

"Okay, on three," Steve instructed. Bucky took a breath and his arm recalibrated. He held up his index finger, middle, ring.

Steve flung out the shield and it ricocheted off the neighboring shipping containers, sparking and drawing their fire enough for Bucky to slip out and take out one, two-- The shield felled a man in the back of the head on its course back to Steve's sure grip as they sprinted for the exit. A sharp pain in his side and Steve stumbled enough to realize he'd been grazed right between the suit's bulletproof panels, and lowered the shield enough to foolishly expose himself to a close call. A bullet nicked the top of his ear.

Bucky shoved him to the ground, left arm giving cover, and Steve propped up the shield to deflect the barrage of incoming fire. He grunted as Bucky's weight shifted on top of him, a holster hitting the fresh shallow wound. The smell of gun oil and ammo was sharp and close as Bucky's elbows bracketed his neck, sniping steady and quick with his Sig balanced on the rim of the shield. From this angle Steve only saw the line of his jaw and the smooth, pale contours of his throat and Adam's apple. Steve reached for the spare Glock he knew was against Bucky's thigh and thumbed off the safety.

"Three." Nat's voice was urgent.

"Let's go." Bucky hauled up him bodily, flesh arm grabbing at Steve's suit and left arm protecting his own vitals.

Bullets pinged off the shield, and Christ, how many people worked security here?

"Did I hear a call for _deus ex machina_?" The comms crackled with delighted amusement.

Steve barely had a second to wonder before something -- no, _someone_ \-- crashed through the roof in a shower of steel beams and dusty debris. A glimpse of red and gold armor plates and then he was hoisted into the air by his suit's shield straps. His stomach lurched -- Coney Island, not again -- and next to him Bucky swore a blue streak as they flew out through the roof of the place.

"Thought you were busy," Steve shouted over his shoulder, the building exploding far below them. Heat brushed the soles of his boots.

"I got bored," Tony replied, and glanced down at Bucky, who he had upside-down by his utility belt. "Oh, sorry, is this uncomfortable?"

  
*

  
Later, at the Tower, Bucky peeled old gauze from the wound Sam had patched in the field. Steve braced his hands on the sink and winced at the sensation. He took another slow swig of protein shake. It'd heal in a few hours.

"Hold still," Bucky grumbled and added antiseptic.

Steve flinched, inhaling through his teeth.

"Yeah, yeah. Just a minute." Ointment, fresh bandage, tape. "Done."

"Op went pretty well, I think," Steve reflected, gently stretching his torso against the bandages, testing. He glanced in the mirror and Bucky's furious expression stopped him cold.

Steve let himself be whirled around, face-to-face.

"Is that a fucking joke?" Bucky pointed to the wound. "This a joke?"

"Hey. I ain't laughing, Buck. I get it," Steve said, reluctant admissions only voiced here in the safety between the two of them.

"No, you don't 'get it'. That other joe would've shot your head off, thank god his aim was a fucking sin. If anything happened to you… I can't. I _couldn't._ " Bucky had him by both shoulders and gave him a firm shake like he still weighed nothing, clattering various toiletries from the countertop.

"Buck, hey, shh--"

"Don't shh me like I’m some child, you complete ass!"

"I'm not! I'm not."

Bucky let him go with a sigh, his frustration deflating as quickly as it'd come, and Steve rested against the vanity, watching Bucky's metal fingers gingerly unfasten the straps on his tac suit. Steve wasn't the only one hurting.

"I'll, let me-- Here." He reached over and batted Bucky's hands from the buckles, carefully working them loose and then unzippering the tough fabric. Bucky untucked and peeled off his spandex underlayer, the top part of the suit hanging heavy over his utility belt until Steve unclipped the belt to set aside. He pulled back and let Bucky return the courtesy, favoring his left arm, stripping away the faded stars and stripes from below the wound. Steve's side twinged as he stepped out of the suit, and Bucky ran a hand through Steve's mussed hair in a gesture that could've been playful, had been many times before, but now lingered.

Steve rested his hands on Bucky's hips, where the suit was still mostly folded over, on either side of where the thin trail of hair that dusted his abdomen grew darker, lower, and felt him freeze. A silent trespass like a dare. They stood silent for a moment. Weighing. The sink dripped once, twice.

"What are you doing," Bucky murmured.

It wasn't too late to retreat. Steve swallowed and it clicked in his throat, belying his nerves. He thought, somewhat incongruously, about a nameless forsaken farmhouse in the wintry French countryside, the solid weight and warmth of Bucky pressed in sleep against his back, through their uniforms and rough horse blankets. Steve didn't retreat.

Bucky's face twitched, a skeptical eyebrow, and his hips tilted slightly as he settled his weight. He reached up with his flesh arm and teased out his hair tie, the bruised white underside of his bicep flexing unmistakably. Purposefully. When his fingers returned, they moved Steve's left hand over the tac suit lower, lower, Bucky's eyes sharp on his face, watching.

Steve's skin flushed. He let out a shaky exhale, blood pounding in his ears. The moment was so fragile, so vulnerable, he was equal parts terrified and electrified. He thought his hand might be shaking where Bucky held it.

"Bucky," he breathed, because what else could he say.

Hesitation, and Bucky let his hand go. "And before?" he asked, careful like the words were gossamer threads, testing his memories.

Steve cleared his throat, bashful. "Can't say I never wondered about it," he huffed, not sure where to put his hand. He certainly couldn't stop thinking about it now. "It wasn't. I thought I knew what I, what we--” He stalled, searching for words that might explain a lifetime ago, the ghost of Peggy between them, unspoken. "I think, maybe, she -- Well. She was always two steps ahead."

"Steve, you don't have to do this. You don't owe me anything."

“It's not like that. It's… I don’t want this to change us."

"Think that ship sailed," Bucky said dryly.

"I mean I don't want to lose you, if this doesn't. If it's not." He made a helpless gesture. Good god, Rogers, you sound like an utter fool, Steve thought, quietly devastated.

Bucky's facade cracked all at once, like stone slipping away, and he lifted his face to the ceiling, eyes closed for a second. When he spoke again it was fierce and earnest in the way he'd always been underneath the suave flair and cocksure posing of his youth, thick with emotion.

"Nothing's ever gonna make me stop pulling your ass out of trouble."

Steve smiled with a short chuckle that caught in his throat as he watched Bucky's pupils eat the blue iris of his eyes, his lips part. The flat of his tongue behind his teeth. He wondered what Bucky tasted like and the thought hit him like a punch. Arousal made him bold enough to reach out and bracket Bucky's hips again, his touch still feather-light, trembling.

"You can … touch me, too. I-- I want you to. If you want to," he added, clumsy. And god, how he wanted him to. He felt his own cock throb in response. Then he was under Bucky's hands -- one soft and one metal cupped his face. A revelation. Both were as tender and gentle as he'd trusted they would be, and for the first time in eighty-some years, Steve let himself be taken care of.

  
*

  
He remembered New York City perpetually rebuilding over itself, reinventing the old landmarks as new again. The ebb and flow of humanity up and down the subway stairs, to and fro on the crosswalks. Neighborhood street lights bright in the odd half-light of dusk to the sound of dinner service at the bars, stray notes of music escaping from opened doors.

Natasha, crossing her bare legs under the cafe table and gazing out across Sullivan Street, face hidden by sunglasses. The flash of her smile, blink and he'd miss it. The store across town where she knew the owner and his uncles and cousins and who always stocked the vodka, the Russian local brands, bootleg just for her. Walking up Brooklyn Bridge on a sunny day, her red hair a living flame in the wind.

Sam setting up the church basement room for the vet group meeting on Sunday nights, growing quiet and thoughtful as he unfolded each chair. The smell of fresh-brewed cheap coffee in half-size paper cups. The way he tilted his head just so when he was really, deeply listening. That it was okay for men to be sad or hurt, and to comfort them too.

  
***

  
_Now_

The engine cut and Steve jostled roughly into the present, the future. His joints were stiff. The daydreams tumbled back to him, slices of memories slotting into place now, of all times. He was off his normal routine and felt the dread anxiety of that truth. Was it also shaking loose these lost moments? And it wasn't only Bucky. The flashes of clarity were like anchors, marking down discrete years of time around which everything else began to fill in. It was so, so long ago. And with his light hopefulness of returning memory came a hollow ache deep in his chest, because eventually … 

Eventually he ended up here.

  
***

  
Chavez ran one final inventory within the shuttle. The seed bank freezer units lining the interior hummed low, connected to the outpost's generator until lift-off switched them to solar. She made her way down the short aisle lined with seating. Older shuttles like this one only spared room for ten passengers, cockpit included. She swung the hatch shut, spun the wheel to lock it in place, and reset the security keypad.

"See you soon, Hotshot," she said, giving the exterior a gentle pat. Chavez craned her neck up, squinting through the temporary scaffolding that held the rocket and shuttle steady on the launch pad. Perspective was a funny thing. The shuttle would be a tiny speck up there in orbit.

She checked her watch and took the tunnel to the outpost main space, then knocked once on the bunk room door she shared with Rambeau before entering. Rambeau sat on the futon, mending a tear in the seam of her black and white tactical suit with violent jabs of the needle. Probably imagining it was Barnes. Chavez unlatched a battered trunk suitcase and after some digging spread her own tac suit across her bunk. It had seen better days. She ran a finger over the lightly frayed stars spread across the torso in what had been intended as an homage to her adopted country, her namesake. Now she found them more like a constellation.

"Fucking Barnes," Rambeau muttered darkly for not the first time. "You shouldn't have covered for him to Carter. He made his call."

"We can't have Council focus on this outpost right as we make our move. Keep a lid on it for now."

Rambeau paused, needle mid-air, as she caught sight of the tac suit. "That old thing? What's wrong with your compression suit?"

"Too thin for an op."

"Hold up, you're not taking me off--"

"I'm going with you. Carter wants this launch on schedule, as ranking officer that's what I'm gonna deliver, and that means I can't risk the extraction going sideways on you out there."

"I can run the op myself, Merry. We've done worse." Rambeau was quietly calm in her indignation. "What is this really? You've been on edge the whole month. Spit it out."

Chavez bit at her thumbnail, reluctant. "Bad feeling. The system's unsettled. It's like waiting for the other shoe to drop. I trust you to run this, I do. I just … I just need to go with you."

"Uh huh." Rambeau sighed. "Listen, if it's between me and Hummingbird, promise you'll get your ass back here. That bank's worth more than the both of us."

"Not to me it isn't."

"Merry, I'm serious."

"So am I."

Rambeau gave her a flat look but a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "And don't pull rank on me."

Chavez huffed and unzipped the suit, wriggling out of her torn spandex layers. "Better finish stitching. We're on the clock now."

  
***

  
It was an ass-numbing ride following the old interstate and then turnpike of what used to be Pennsylvania. The Atlantic Ocean had reclaimed the coast and the I-95 corridor existed mostly as a patchwork of ice floes from which high rises reared, some tilted, all shattered. A few suburbs still smouldered in a smoky haze, burnt from now-decrepit utilities and passing scavengers not tending their campfires or cigarettes.

Bucky hadn't revisited Manhattan since the immediate aftermath of impact. There was nothing to visit. It was wreckage like so many other places. The easiest approach now was to turn north, following the Appalachians and the Delaware's frozen riverbed, and then cut east across to Stony Point and the Hudson, which you could take fast and clear to the single remaining tower of the George Washington Bridge before the going got dicey. Great skeletons of fallen skyscrapers, barges, and assorted infrastructure detritus rose from the frozen river and into Manhattan as far as the eye could see, some long-covered in ice and snow like a convoluted dystopian obstacle course.

Rumlow halted their caravan in the shelter of a barge's crumpled hull and lit a cigarette while the small crew of scavengers chewed on whatever sustenance they'd packed for the trip. Bucky unscrewed a thermos of protein-fortified soup and let the first sips scald his tongue, melt the icicles around his mouth and nose. It would take a few hours to cover the remaining distance to Avengers Tower, whatever was left of it. Finding the Eye in this wreckage might be a daunting needle in a haystack. It could all be a wild goose chase. Bucky thought of the shuttle countdown, of Dani, and gnawed over the sick weight of guilt in his gut. Then he shoved it all aside. It was too late for doubts; he'd put his money on this horse. Getting to the Tower required total focus. There were hidden crevasses, an unstable ice floe, and Rumlow.

Bucky closed his eyes and inhaled the salty-savory stream from the broth, letting it center him. He pictured the outpost kitchen. Earlier -- Steve's kitchen. Wrapped warm like an embrace. _Home_.

A bootleg CB radio on someone's snowmobile crackled with static across frequencies. This close to the deserted city it was hard to get a clear signal, not that there was anyone to send them. Faint warbling music, one or two fuzzed half-words, the emergency broadcast monotone that had been going and going and going for years.

"--post alert bulletin, missing persons--" The automated message came across clear as day. Must be a regional broadcast on an outpost channel. "--guaranteed evacuation or trade equivalent for safe return, Security Council Captain Steven Grant Rogers, white male--"

The bottom fell out.

The woods at night, brushing ice off his face, screaming for medical, _get the fucking medic, stay with me_ \--

His thermos was in the snow, leftover soup in a frozen puddle. Everything was very sharp and very constricted, like in the vent ducts, like in his nightmares. _Breathe_. He didn't want to breathe. If he breathed it would be real. Dots danced in his vision, which was abruptly filled by Rumlow's contorted face.

"Answer me when I'm talking to you, Soldier!"

It was a Pavlovian response, to snap to attention, his reptile brain taking over survival while the rest of him stayed in a mental scream. Steve was missing, Steve was missing again. He had to find him. He couldn't leave. What if he killed them all, right now, he could do it, not so difficult. And then what, and then what. Radio Albany, Sharon. Sharon-- _Launch is the number one priority_ . She'd known even then, known he would want to run after. Forget the launch. Get the last known GPS-- GPS. Rumlow's insurance policy. Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck_. The Council would terminate him. Send in a drone to snipe him, case closed. That was what happened to problematic super assets. Fraternizing with Hydra and deserting his post. Once a prisoner, always a prisoner. What if Steve was dead, what if it was already too late, they'd as well as left him for dead. He couldn't let Rumlow get the Eye. A rat in a maze. Sweating panic redoubled through him -- not now, not now --

His left arm stopped Rumlow cold, before the incoming slap could land, a mechanical reflex. Bucky flinched, hated himself for it, then dropped the hold and hated that too. There were guns trained on him. He wanted to retch, his legs weak. The Soldier was never weak.

Rumlow rubbed his wrist, livid but guarded. "This you?" he demanded, jerking his head to where the CB radio had fallen silent. "Tell your sweet old grandpa Steve everything, run to him like a good little doggie? He on his way to blow this up?"

"No," Bucky rasped. "I don't know any of it."

"Lie to me and I'll fuck your corpse in front of him." Rumlow spat on the ground, next to the frozen soup. "Everybody back in line, and keep that radio shit off. Heel, Soldier."

He saw red and his left arm recalibrated with a threatening whir, but it was all he could do to stay standing, keep his lunch down, save some scrap of dignity. If the others lost their fear of him, it was over. He bit his tongue and focused on the pain. It was controlled, sharp and coppery and familiar, something to meditate on. Zen, sure.

The Eye was the only mission now.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remembering.
> 
> "I can see the beauty of glass objects fully at the moment when they slip from my hand."  
> \-- Andrew Solomon, _The Noonday Demon_

"Where are we?" Steve asked, stumbling off the snowmobile on half-asleep legs as MJ cut the headlights. His body was a dead weight. He watched her ghost of a shadow pull a white tarp over the snowmobile, weigh it down with stones. Around them loomed clusters of buried abandoned structures, their roofs caved in from snow weight. Some sort of plaza. In the distance came little puffs of light and rumbles like thunder. War was always happening somewhere.

"Hydra," MJ whispered. "Their blockade's been pounding our homestead for days."

She led him around a collapsed wall into one of the buildings, its roof a drunken M shape. She ducked under an ice-encased cracked support beam, disappearing in the darkness for a moment, then a light stick glowed. The small enclave continued, sloping steeply, and Steve dug his heels in the frozen snow. MJ slowed, and then they were on concrete. A staircase. Ahead: hushed noises, someone coughing, the sounds of people moving about, the low murmur of conversation.

At the first landing a hole gaped through the wall and it opened into a massive garage for what must've once been a highway retailer repair shop, preserved under a sturdy ceiling. Lanterns cast dim halos but even in the gloom the main feature of the garage was unmistakable: an old Peterbilt semi cab and trailer. A small but lively encampment of scavengers fell silent and watched them clamber from the stairway hole, Steve's shield clanging off the concrete like an awkward gong. Among the patched and reinforced camping tents were makeshift tables constructed from spare debris, upon which an impressive assortment of weaponry was arrayed. Trading and raiding the right places. A man with a heavily bandaged jaw tended a hotplate hooked to a solar battery.

"Welcome to the garrison," MJ said, taking a swig from an old Valvoline canister marked XXX.

Steve cleared his throat and looked around at the closed and worn faces staring back at him. "Hi. I'm Steve."

"Yeah, we know, Captain," someone said scornfully.

"He's gonna have rats down here before we know it, flush us out like roaches," someone else scowled.

MJ shook her head. "No trackers. They got evac shuttles going off, no one'll be looking."

"You tell him we don't hand out merit badges?" Scattered hoots.

Steve swallowed a wave of hot embarrassment. "I'm here to help," he said, and even to himself it sounded dry-mouthed and dull. Pathetic. This was a mistake and they all knew it.

But to his surprise this was met with a smattering of low chuckles and resigned shrugs. _Could be worse. Ah, fuck it, why not. Nothing to lose._

"Here, this'll put some hair back on your chest." MJ passed him the canister. It reeked of alcohol and sick-sweet sugar, and tasted like nothing, just a burn the whole way down that made him wince. She caught his sideways glance at the sour man with the bandaged jaw. "Paul's not a fan. Everybody here has a story but you might say the themes are the same."

"What's yours?"

"None of your business to ask." She smiled without warmth. "Care to guess why you've been recruited?"

He glanced toward the truck. "You need a driver."

"We could figure it easy enough, but plowing out of here and through the Hydra blockade with a trailer full of scavengers on snowmobiles requires a very good, mostly indestructible driver."

"I think my indestructible days are behind me."

"I said mostly."

"You know, you could've mentioned the bit about a driver first, instead of trying to kidnap me."

"Never said they were the same plan." MJ shrugged. "This one's better for everyone."

Well then. Steve ran a hand through his hair. The rig wasn't retrofitted like the outpost ones. It would be fragile to run her in these temps. "You'll have to dig or melt down to the garage door. I can't get her through a steel wall but I can get her up a slope."

"Already working on it."

"You need defensive armor, a plow--"

"Scrap metal's outside."

"Tire chains?"

"Got 'em."

Steve squinted and considered. "It could all go to hell."

"Least we'd be warm."

He quirked a smile and exhaled. "Yeah, I can do it. Hey, you got a CB radio? It's… I promised a friend I'd check in."

"Bucky Barnes?" MJ swished a mouthful of the moonshine.

"What?" He stalled, would rather not have this conversation.

"I hear you on the airwaves sometimes."

_Jesus Christ_. He willed away the blush rising high on his cheeks. "So, spying."

"It's public airwaves, it's not spying. I didn't mean … Not your, whatever. I'm not a fucking creep." Now it was MJ's turn to blush. "It's just nice to surf and hear other voices out there, you know? Ever since the impact, it's like, there's only so many of us, of people, left out there."

"The impact," Steve repeated, dread gathering on the tip of tongue with the syllables. He wanted to turn away but the promise of hidden, terrible knowledge riveted him.

"Sometimes I wake up thinking it wasn't real. Just for a split second, it's nice. But then you have to remember it all over again. Pete was there when the meteors hit Manhattan. He saved a lot of people, me included. Never enough, though. You still have nightmares too, I bet."

The impact. Meteors. What had he--

***

_Then_

Steve stood on the empty deck of the aircraft carrier and craned his neck up, searching the sky. The sun was blindingly bright in a perfect blue. Beneath him the deck, and its vibranium cargo, bobbed on the warm swells of the Pacific. The nearest sister ship was a hazy outline five miles to the north. Desperate times made for interesting allies. He let the salty wind slap the bare skin on his wrists, his neck, his face, where the suit didn't cover. Another new design from Tony; more reinforced fibers, a little less patriotic. Public sentiment about Captain America was touchy these days.

"Pulsar activation in five," Natasha's voice said over his comms unit. "Iron Man and War Machine in position, USAF and PLAAF holding."

"What's your status, Nat?"

"Reaching position now with Banner and Wilson. I love a good dramatic countdown."

"Any word on Fury?" Bucky had soundlessly approached from the bridge. He was grim and tense, all in black. Missions were always a necessary burden to be borne. Penance due. It took a toll every time, in the nights before and the hours after. All Steve could offer was to hold him tight.

Steve switched off his comms. "He's in bypass surgery, confirmed heart attack. Hill said he kept talking about some kind of emergency pager. She's on route back to his safehouse to have a look."

"Heart attack, huh. Can't blame him." Bucky studiously avoided looking at the sky. "Guy has nine lives, he'll pull through."

"What's the bridge saying."

Bucky checked his watch. "That you better get your ass back there in--"

"Captain Rogers! We have a situation!" King T'Challa called out, sharp, as a Wakandan air fleet roared urgently across the sky, piercing the calm pretense. Crewmen rushed from the operations room to below deck. A thread of leaden fear pulled in Steve's gut.

The old SHIELD vessel's bridge had been refitted with a dazzling array of imported Wakandan tech and the King loomed over it now. Princess Shuri rapid-fire went through what looked like multiple radar screens, relaying positioning to their fleet. The screens showed rapidly approaching, descending dots. Hundreds. Thousands.

"Activate it now," T'Challa barked over the intercom, and met Steve. "The redirect pulsar is failing."

"What? But Tony--" Steve turned his own comms back on but it screeched with interference. The ship hummed, the vibranium ore syncing with its counterparts across the globe. The atmosphere shimmered as if with a shock of lightening as the shielding spread out.

"--sending coordinates now, scramble for intercept Bravo Charlie--"

T'Challa continued, hollow and grim: "Prepare for incoming. The shielding cannot withstand unmitigated impact."

Steve heard the underlying message crystal clear. This was it. This was the end. He knew in the pit of his stomach, just like he knew they'd lost Tony and Rhodes. But how could it be so sudden? The pulsar mission was risky, sure, but they'd always pulled through. How could a bunch of space rock stymie the best tech on Earth? They'd repelled aliens but there was nothing for this? There wasn't enough time--

Through the bridge's forward windows the blue sky speckled with tiny flares, thousands catching in the atmosphere and descending closer, closer--

The first wave hit the shielding tech with a far-off sonic boom and crackle, abruptly changing blue to a strange purplish light. Steve took an involuntary step back and a hand grabbed his arm. He looked at Bucky, their eyes meeting for a second, wide. There was so much left undone and unsaid, again, always.

The ship's emergency alarm tripped. 

"Go, get on deck," Bucky shouted, propelling Steve to the stairs. T'Challa yelled something in Wakandan to the crew and pulled Shuri from the controls with a cry of protest.

The ship lurched and Steve slammed into the stairwell, smashing part of the reinforced wall. Through the porthole of the deck door the sea roiled and hissed as meteors flamed into it. Bucky pressed him forward, out onto the wide flight deck -- A crushed fighter jet wrapped in a ball of fire crashed through the ship's satellite tower with an enormous screaming shudder. The deck shook as it punched into the stern behind them, and Steve grabbed a railing by the command center island. The ship tilted rapidly, satellite tower debris coming down heavy across the bridge entrance.

"Take my hand!" Bucky shouted to T'Challa, who pulled Shuri through the partially-blocked doorway, the deck listing and the ocean growing closer as the massive carrier sank.

Steve braced himself on the railing and grabbed Bucky's straining flesh forearm. He wasn't letting go a second time.

Bucky hoisted Shuri up to Steve's perch and reached back for T'Challa. A meteor chunk blew through the bow and the ship wrenched sideways. Part of the radar support beam gave way and Bucky swore with pain as it caught his metal joints out of place.

"Bucky!" They needed to get free soon or they'd be sucked under with the ship.

"Brother!" Shuri screamed. "The suit! Jump!"

Before Steve could understand, T'Challa touched his tribal necklace and it rippled into some kind of black tactical suit. He leapt from the debris and grabbed the railing as another chunk of the bow hurtled past. Steve tightened his grip on Bucky, who was fighting to free his arm from the beam wrenching him down and away -- not again, please god not again -- But he held. This time, he held.

"Fuck, oh fuck," Bucky gritted out, color drained from his face.

"I got you. You're okay. I've got you," Steve heard himself saying over and over again. He thought he might throw up. T'Challa had the back of Bucky's tac suit in one hand and Shuri's waist in the other, keeping their small team together. They would have to swim for it, hard, and if the undertow took them down, drowning in a different ocean this time--

"My King!" someone cried and suddenly there was a Wakandan hovercraft and women with shaved heads and strong arms helping them aboard. Saltwater reached for Steve's boots as he lifted Bucky to them for rescue. Waves boomed higher, greedy to take him -- they'd given him up once and they wanted him back, down there where it was so cold and dark and silent -- and then T'Challa was telling him to _let go of the railing, Steve_ , and so he did.

Steve crawled unsteadily across the hoverboard platform as they rocketed skyward, the last of the ship disappearing into an angry Pacific beneath them. A few of their rescued crew wept, stunned. He took big gasping breaths, as if he couldn't believe they weren't filled with seawater. The hoverboard swerved, dodging meteors that kept coming and coming, incessant. Bucky lay breathing shallow and pale, wild-eyed. Steve dragged him into his lap, cradling his head, reflex as old as his bones. They watched the fiery horizon. The sky was falling.

It was full of terrible beauty, the end of the world.

*

The breadth of destruction was impossible to grasp. The impact event lasted long enough to pockmark half the globe with craters, flooding coastlines and spurring fires that sent ash and dust high into the atmosphere.

The first weeks were rescues. It wasn't until months later, with the sun still gone and temperatures dropping, that evacuation became a real conversation. A conversation only possible by the appearance of hundreds of spaceships in the sky overnight, apparently a belated response orchestrated through Fury's mysterious pager and an enhanced ex-Navy pilot. Among SHIELD's many secrets had been an advanced space program tasked with second-Earth exploration and alien diplomacy. Alien diplomacy. Steve doubted they had tried to contact the Chitauri.

Logistics were a nightmare, of course. Lottery systems. Conspiracy theories. Martial law. Radiation sickness and starvation crept across the planet like twin biblical plagues. It started snowing and didn't stop.

Steve thought if he paused too long, truly stopped to reflect, he'd turn to dust and blow away in the ever-present stiff wind. The friends he'd lost, that others had lost, the flattened neighborhoods, charred woodland, cities brought to their knees. The sheer staggering magnitude of loss was overwhelming. And so he kept going, because it was the only thing he could do. Evacuate one family at a time. Assemble protection for the launch pads, the food surplus rationing sites, the gas depots.

*

"I'm going up," Sam said, over oatmeal in the bare pantry. All they ever had was oatmeal. Sam looked around the table at their pinched and drawn faces, his words echoing off them.

Bucky leaned back and managed a small smile of encouragement, scrubbing his beard where icicles still thawed. "Your choice?"

"My choice. I know how it looks." He shook his head. "I don't want this to come across like giving up, running away. I've gotta be somewhere more hopeful."

"Yeah, that sure as fuck ain't here, pal," Bucky quipped. "Mothership?"

"I got clearance to be on crew, with Bruce. I'll be back. It's not forever."

Sharon nodded and folded her arms, the dark circles under her eyes like long-smeared mascara. When she spoke her voice trembled. "But it'll be a few years?"

"I know." He put a hand over hers gently and left it there, pained. "I can't do it anymore. This place is gonna kill me if I stay."

Silence.

"Steve, man, say something."

What was there to say? He was utterly numb, as cold as the ice outside. And so he did what he'd been doing so often these days and thought about what Steve From Before might've said, and fit those words into his mouth. "It's a good crew, you should take the opportunity. We'll miss you around here, but I can't fault you for going."

Sam's mouth tightened into a thin line. "You can't keep everything buried or it'll kill you too. We've lost the same friends. I know."

"Can we talk about this later," Steve said dully. He had a mission at 0900 and there was at least two feet of snow outside that meant he'd need more gas for the snowmobile and he'd need to pack double the calories and a second set of dry clothes just in case.

*

The Albany Avengers site refortified into what they were calling outposts, the Security Council finally stepping in to fill the void left by SHIELD and federal, local government. New names for the same things.

It was a place to continue existing, Steve thought, noting the ubiquitous Council logos on his walk-through. Feigning order, structure.

He stopped short in the garage. There was a row of huge semi tractor trailers, shined and polished. A few were loaded with pallets of rations from the surplus deep underground. That wasn't surprising; supply routes were planned to start as early as the next day with the few competent drivers they'd managed to entice with food or evacuation contracts. No one wanted to drive in snowstorms and risk being hanged by rioting survivors, all so they could eventually reach their radiation exposure limit.

But a dog-like android worked what Steve could swear was an arc reactor into the engine of the nearest cab.

"Hey! What is that thing?" Steve called to where Sharon was directing loads.

" _Thing?_ " the android repeated incredulously, nearly dropping the miniature triangular device into the cab's bowels.

Okay, so it spoke. "Where did you steal this from, huh?" Steve hissed, trying to grab what he was now sure was an arc reactor as the android maddeningly evaded him.

"Are you fucking nuts, I invented these -- Hey, hey! Sharon! A little help!"

"These belong to Tony Stark, not a robot--"

"First of all, it's android, more specifically Bio-Intelligent Thought System, and second of all, okay, it's a little complicated and maybe you should sit down, Cap."

"What did you just call me?"

Sharon reached them, a little breathless. "Hey, so. Steve, this is BITS."

He peered closer and noticed the Stark Industries logo stamped across the front of one of its smooth, elliptical appendages. "Is it…" He couldn't finish the sentence.

"An artificial intelligence system modeled precisely from Tony Stark's brain patterns and knowledge base?" the android supplied helpfully.

"It's not like Zola," Sharon rushed to clarify. "Pepper sent it, along with a few other … gifts. Turns out Tony had a better backup plan than most of us."

"So what does it do."

"Okay, first, rude. I feel like we started off on the wrong foot. You see this reactor? It's gonna go right here into your truck's auxiliary power unit."

"I don't have a truck."

The android glanced at Sharon. "Sure you don't. Anyway, this little guy powers you in emergencies, keeps the insides from freezing, a lot like the nanosuit actually--"

"The what?"

The android paused and looked to Sharon again, who was putting up her best poker face. "You know what, I forgot a screwdriver." It folded up and scuttled to a truck three spaces down, nearly taking out two Security Council crew struggling with a pallet.

Steve turned to Sharon with folded arms and narrowed eyes, readying for an argument. He heard Bucky's snowmobile rev into the garage and his chest unclenched marginally. "All right. Tell me," he said evenly.

She sighed and watched, waiting, as Bucky pulled off his helmet and joined them, brow furrowed at Steve's posture and her serious demeanor. "What's wrong."

"Tony sent us an android clone of himself," Steve said.

"Holy shit, what?" Bucky's eyes lit up before he schooled his expression. "I mean … Is that bad."

"It's help," Sharon emphasized. "With the evacuations, we need all we can get. And that's why the Security Council wants Steve on the high-risk truck routes. Barnes, you’ll run recon."

Bucky snorted. "Course they don’t trust me with a truck."

"I can't drive that," Steve said flatly.

"You'll learn. Lessons start tomorrow."

*

Steve let out a long groan into the flimsy pillow that was already damp with sweat and spit, loud enough to counter the deepening burn of fullness in his ass despite the lube, and muffled enough to hear the breathy string of half-curses Bucky whispered above him. They were pulled off at a makeshift rest stop in a valley somewhere in New Hampshire, part of a week-long slog that criss-crossed New England. The pine trees were still half-green up here, and they rose dark and sheltering around the truck cabs, silent watchmen in the dead of night.

"Fuck, 'm not gonna last," Bucky gritted out and shifted, bumping their knees together on the too-small cab bed, and Steve could feel coarse hair against his ass, the softness of his balls, where they were joined together. Bucky's hands on his hips were tight yet gentle, careful not to bruise with his left, the right smoothing appreciatively over his ass and thighs, leaving behind cold wet streaks of spit and Surgilube from the expired first aid kit. Better than the rancid cooking oils left on the shelves. Steve wondered not for the first time what the hell this would look like to a casual peeping tom, as if anyone would be out there. Captain America taking it up the ass. His own cock jerked. This used to be illegal, called perverted. He arched his back, pushing into Bucky's hands, and braced himself on his forearms, sweat trickling down from under his arms more from excited nerves than any real heat.

"Bucky," he groaned again, the only word he cared to say, grown-out stubble scraping into the pillow as he rolled forward and back oh-so-slowly, drawing another curse from behind him.

"Okay, okay, okay," and he could feel the slightest of tremors in Bucky's thighs where they touched his own, damp and sticky.

The sharp, huge stretch of nearly pulling out and then bottoming back in kicked the breath from his lungs, sparks of pain flying up. Bucky made a noise somehow more obscene than the squelching flesh-on-flesh and it went directly to Steve's dick. He could take this, the raw splitting-open right down the center of his being, the thoughtless relief of surrender. To be strong enough to take it but also to let himself be small again, tucked and handled and sheltered under the warmth of Bucky's love. There was only the brightness of the pain and the full pulses of pleasure inside his body, pulling then pushing him apart. His core shivered, strained, as the tension ratcheted up like a corkscrew in his heart.

"God, you're so good-- Ah--"

A flood of warmth soothed the soreness inside him as Bucky clutched him tight then nudged him forward, forward, forward in stuttered rhythm with the sweetest moan. It was like surfacing after a dive. Steve braced his forehead on the stiff mattress, freeing an arm to reach down and pump his eager cock for release -- one, two, three -- Bucky caressed over his balls, the tender spot below --

"Steve, sweetheart," Bucky rumbled, sex-drunk and admiring, propping him up with an arm around his chest like he weighed nothing.

His own come striped the thin sheet, and for a little while longer he was warm.

*

He was fine, until he wasn't. Maybe it had always built to this, who was to say. In the nightmare Steve was in the ice again. When he woke up, he was still in the ice.

Beside him, Bucky sprawled stomach-down, left arm reflecting the meager ambient light. The metal plating shone like an accusation where it met his scarred skin. Years of talking through it but Steve stubbornly, secretly, held to the real truth no one wanted to voice: that it was evidence of Steve's failure. One of many, wasn't it?

Cold seeped into the empty places the years had carved out from him. The weight of the ocean crashed all at once, a physical stone on him that grew and paralyzed him in terror. He sucked a breath. The world was inevitably ending in a drawn-out dismantling of everything he'd vowed to protect. He had failed and he would continue to fail, because the forces in motion now were beyond the control of one man with super-soldier serum. There was no Hitler to punch. Brooklyn was in ruins. What there was, was a pile of rocks out back of the hangar in memory of the fallen. A converted office down the hall with various collected personal items, a pair of ballet slippers. The ache of not-having manifested heavy and crushing. Even these things would fade and be swallowed up at the end. It all returned to dust.

Ice clutched at his lungs.

Maybe this was what it felt like to die.

He stared at the ceiling, consciously drawing one heavy breath, then another. Frozen.

The darkness went on and on and on, inexorable.

Later:

"Steve?"

"Tired." Steve moved his lips and the words uttered from miles and miles away, through the chrysalis of ice that squeezed him tight and grew daggers into his chest.

*

US-15 to Lowell and Cambridge and across the mountains.

I-60 from Richmond to Harrisburg and back to Albany.

The routes grew shorter, shuttles trailing smoke behind them in the clouds, escaping free of gravity. Not everyone was lucky enough to get a shuttle seat in time. Roads built up with ice and packed snow, neglected and abandoned to a screaming Nature, some now impassable. He blinked and hours passed.

"Nomad, talk to me," the CB radio plead.

Oatmeal in the morning, load up the truck, precisely-portioned protein supplements for the road, unload the truck, thick soups and dry rations for dinner. Lights out. Lights on. Run thirty laps inside the supply hangar -- his ma, Peggy, Bucky, Howard, Tony, Fury, Natasha, the radiation-soaked Harrisburg suburb on his route full of living skeletons -- Wash. Put on clothes, layers. Oatmeal in the morning, load up the truck.

"I got you," Bucky mumured soft and warm into the back of his neck, curled around like an apostrophe in the dark, and a small spot of ice thawed inside Steve.

"I know," Steve whispered, but the ice was so dense and he was too far. Steve was going to take Bucky down with him because he was a selfish bastard. He should be strapping Bucky to the next shuttle. Instead he was anchoring him in a cold bed. And every night he waited to see if this would be the night that Bucky decided enough was enough, that this wasn't the Steve he fell in love with, and left.

Oatmeal. Route. Route. Thirty laps -- Hydra's resurgence on the fringe cult circuit, the total collapse of New York City, the upstate family that ate their dead when he was delayed a week by a blizzard. 

Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Each repeat became a Herculean effort, the coordination of limbs to rise from bed. The icicles stabbed and it was hard to move such frozen joints.

The seasons didn't change and that suited him just fine.

A low-spoken conversation in the hall on a rare day with no routes, when he didn't need to leave the bunk room:

"He's barely sleeping, we haven't-- He needs real help. Put in a call, steal it, I don't care."

"Morphine? It's the apocalypse, the first supply to go was the pharmaceuticals. You know that." The scuff of a boot against tile. "I'll radio up. What about the support groups?"

"I'm trying but he's still a stubborn ass."

And he knew, of course he knew, that he needed to talk about this. That he was not okay. But trying to put it into words, the hopelessness of articulating the ice to anyone, pinned him to inaction, to perpetuating failure. _Please don't make me keep saying no to you_ , he thought. _Please don't leave me_ , was always the chaser.

It was only the following week when he was back on the road, headed for a newly established cluster of survivors, homesteads, they were called. The snow and wind was flattening the horizon, disappearing the scarred landscape, frozen and buried. Steve shifted his grip on the steering wheel and took a sip of hot coffee as a reminder he was still alive. It was easy to want to keep driving, the temptation to turn it all off and just drive away. But that wasn't a move Steve could make, not really; a bright scrap of instinct burned into him from childhood. He resented it.

So instead he turned off at Suburban Appliance, into a fenced-in lot with a various assortment of repurposed military equipment and generators, most useless without diesel.

The whole trailer was for this stop alone, and the survivors here were a distinct brand of New Englanders content to manage their own supply unloading, so Steve waited in the shadow of the building next to a small bin of smouldering wet firewood that was ostensibly cooking a pot of … something. He let his eyes rest on the trailer bed and willed himself to not begin again the worn litany of names and faces and places that surfaced ad nauseum like a ritualistic impulse. If he stood here long enough maybe he would root to the spot like a statue and fade into the forgotten debris, be buried again.

His dark reverie was shattered by a genuine peal of laughter from above. It rang out once more like a bell from heaven before receding to inaudible conversation. Here, of all places, was joy. The longing for it cut him like a knife, a sharp physical pain.

"You're in the bad place," a ragged man said knowingly but not without empathy. He ambled to Steve's side and poked the dying logs to life with a long iron. "I've seen it. I know it."

"Seems like everyone's in the bad place these days."

"Naw, I wouldn't say that. It's hard to see the garden when you're in the well."

Steve grunted. The trailer was only half-unloaded. He was exhausted at the prospect of conversation.

"I got something you might be interested in, for a price. Take a chance on a barter." The man rooted around in a small pack at his waist and produced a bottle of Tylenol. Steve glanced away. "Don't judge a bottle by its label, Cap. This is Doctor Doom custom dediscozipine."

The pills shook out, pale little things with home-made etched initials.

"I could arrest you," Steve said. The thought of it was so unappealing and tedious he immediately dropped it.

"Or you could give these a try for a tank of that diesel."

"Meds don't take with me, you're wasting your time."

"Normal dose, way I make it, once a week." He shrugged. "See what one a day does for you. Just don't forget to come back if you like it. And you will."

Steve eyed the bottle as the man left him time to consider. He thought about the survivor support groups, how many lost loved ones because of his failures. What right did he have to speak there. He thought about Sharon calling in for specialty meds out of the precious orbiting supply all so he could feel normal again, as if he deserved to feel normal again when the world was crumbling and deeply altered for the brief remaining time this existence clung on. He thought about Bucky. How it had been before, hell, been his whole life up till last month. He had to get back to that, somehow, no matter what. Or he'd lose Bucky. No one could love a piece of ice for long. It terrified him, and the sheer desperation alone was enough to spur action, like jumping from a plane, like crossing into enemy territory.

"One tank only," Steve said, and held out his hand.

"Oh, this deal we get in writing."

Later, in the truck cab, he studied the pills in their little custom box. One a day. He took three just to be sure, and let his mind spin free to run over its worn track, lighting up his neurons along their punishing path like homing beacons. He shifted into gear and headed to the radio tower to replace a faulty part.

***

_Now_

"I think he's broken," someone was saying above him, and he opened his eyes. The man with the bandaged face, Paul, crossed his arms.

"Steve?" MJ peered at him.

He was in the garage, next to the Peterbilt, and he sat up with a start, MJ steadying him from a bout of wooziness. The camp's activity resumed as the small crowd that had gathered trickled away. Not dead yet. Steve's mind sped off in a hundred directions at once, as if making up for lost time, and he fumbled for a single actionable thought.

"I need a phone, a radio-- I have to call Cleveland outpost."

Paul threw his hands in the air. "He's gonna call the fucking rats."

"He's gonna throw up," MJ countered. "Get the Geiger--"

"No. It's not radiation, it's the … It's dediscozipine." Steve shook his head clear. Clear for the first time in … God, he didn't want to know. Shame boiled up and he plowed through it. "Please, I have to make a call, Bucky--"

"You're telling me _Captain America's_ a ded-head? Jesus fucking--" Paul darted a glance to the rest of the camp and hissed at MJ. "This is the guy you want driving that thing? I'm begging you to think."

MJ held up a hand. "Just-- One thing at a time, Paul." Her expression tightened, sour and hard. "CB is tracked, no-go. I got an encrypted sat phone, but you're not getting privacy and the battery's shit. Wait here."

The phone was some ancient model from fifteen years ago, beaten to within an inch of its life. The little icon in the corner lit up blue when it caught a connection from some forgotten junk satellite still in orbit. He knew the direct-dial access code for Cleveland, and wasn't it strange to have information right there, readily-summoned without searching in the dark for half-pieces. The line beeped, waiting. Waiting.

"WSC Cleveland Outpost ID 564 is not available. To leave a callback message, stay on the line."

Not available? Steve swallowed his panic and tried to heel his racing mind. Had he missed something? They'd stopped briefing him. The evac shuttles, right. Maybe they were offline prepping for launch. The line beeped again, prompting for a callback message, and it was so sudden he'd had no chance to collect his thoughts, to say anything eloquent that could approach what might breach the time and the distance, and nothing was fair. MJ and Paul watched him.

"Buck, it's Steve. I don't know where -- When you hear this, I hope you're safe." He stopped, throat tight. "I remembered. Before the radio tower. It wasn't -- I had these pills. Had them ever since. I don't think anyone knows. And I thought I -- I made a stupid, _stupid_ mistake. I fucked it all up. I'm not asking for forgiveness, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's not what I ever wanted for us."

The phone chimed; low battery warning.

"Take the shuttle," he said, quick as ripping off a bandage or knifing a wound. "Get the hell away from here. Sam was right--"

The connection died along with the phone and part of his heart. He hadn't even said _I love you_ , Steve realized. But he'd done what he couldn't do before, hadn't he? Admit the sin, give permission to let go, escape the prison. There would be grief waiting for him later, when this all became real and part of the tortuous mental circuit, and he was torn between craving the oblivion of Doctor Doom and welcoming the suffering penance of memory. For now it had to be the latter.

"We've all been there," MJ said, wrenching him back into awareness of the present. She said it as fact, not pity or sympathy, and for that he was grateful. Paul studied the chrome of the cab.

Steve looked over the truck, and back at the ragtag encampment. She said they'd all been there, but had they really, truly? Into the ice? Could you go there and come back? It had felt inescapable, the smallness of perceived victories swallowed by the enormous antipathy of time and space. Yet here they all were, readying to fling themselves against a hideous evil one more time. Get back up and take one more punch.

"Let's get this trailer hitched," Steve said, and rose.


	9. Chapter 9

Chavez set her watch and steadied the binoculars across the river to the dark bunker. It was a full moon and the cloud cover was a strange grayed orange. Every muscle in her body was too tense. The sooner this was over, the better. "Think the mine access is still good?"

Rambeau grunted next to her, flat on her stomach. "Hell of a lot better than the vent ducts."

She wanted this rescue as bad as Rambeau, and that meant taking stupid risks. They'd need to cross the exposed riverbed. Upriver would be better, just enough around the bend that it wouldn't be the first place eyes went. Time was critical now; there was a cushion but it wasn't much. Better to evac right onto the shuttle. Less time for the Puritans to notice Danielle’s absence and figure out what the hell had happened. And a more favorable exit strategy in case the militia caught on and gave chase. Even better if Barnes was back at the outpost, not that she had high hopes.

Rambeau heaved herself from the snow and Chavez shouldered the supplies pack. Cosmic superstition or not, this was happening.

*

The basement sublevel was quiet, drafty, and the very definition of ominous. Chavez played her flashlight beam through the abandoned cells, wondering what kind of fucked up torture happened here. Scattered rusted equipment caught the light, empty overturned filing cabinets and the crunch of ancient glass underfoot. She thought of Barnes's file and shivered.

"Maybe the message didn't go through," she muttered to Rambeau, checking her watch again. They didn't have time to wait around.

"Triple-checked. This is the meeting spot," Rambeau whispered firmly.

"Well what if she--"

"I'm here."

Chavez jumped more than she'd care to admit as a white-robed apparition emerged from one of the cells. The flashlight bounced crazily off the ceiling before coming to rest on Danielle. Chavez sighed and rested a hand on her racing heart. All right then.

"Sorry, I wasn't sure it was you," Dani said to Rambeau. "You have a new partner."

"Don't worry, doesn't change our plans. This is my best friend, Merry. How you feeling?" Rambeau unzipped their pack for the spare boots and parka, the bundles of layers.

Dani shrugged and wiped at her eyes, then clutched her own elbows, arms crossed against the robe's tie.

Rambeau persisted. "After this, no turning back. Are you with me?"

"The letter, did you read it?"

Rambeau paused, confused. "No."

"I'm not the daughter he remembers." Grief and loss were so worn and common these days but the raw pain still bit.

“Maybe not," Rambeau gently allowed. "But I know your daddy's heart isn’t so easily dissuaded from loving.”

There were always these conversations at the end, the airing of last-minute doubts and fears, an acute case of the what-ifs. This was where it always went south with sensitive evacs, where the separation became real. It was their responsibility to keep everybody in one piece and get things moving.

Dani nodded, less than convinced, but her expression was set. "I'm taking this shuttle, even if I'm alone after. Nana'd kill me if I turned back now."

"You won't be alone," Rambeau said, her voice fierce. "You won't. I'm not gonna let that happen. Okay?"

Rather than answer, Dani wiped her face again and gave a shuddering sigh of finality, resignation, something much older than she was. She had a resilient spirit, Chavez thought, watching her yank on the new clothes a size too large. It helped to have someone waiting up there, a journey with a purpose, even among the doubt. All the same, this would be Dani's last day on Earth, her home. Maybe she would return eventually, get a ship pass or enlist. But to travel back was to miss years and years, and all this would be swept away and absorbed into Nature by then. Time was eager and merciless.

Speaking of time: "We gotta move."

*

At the mouth of the mine tunnel, Chavez scanned the hillside and riverbed. Nothing. The base and its environs slept under the eerie midnight clouds. It had taken them fifteen minutes to scramble from bank to bank, and now would surely take longer with Dani in tow, but there was no other way. To go quietly down and up these rocky hillsides meant to go slowly, and reaching the flat of the riverbed was only half the battle.

Chavez checked her watch, a compulsion now, as Rambeau guided Dani onto the frozen expanse. It wasn't bad. They'd make it, give or take an hour. Minimize Dani's exposure to the frigid cold.

Halfway across there was a pop, a crack, like ice breaking, and Chavez glanced down expecting to see spiderweb fractures -- it was too thick, it made no sense -- before she registered the dark single bullet in the snow and the dull throb where it had bounced off her kneecap.

"Sniper," Rambeau hissed.

"In front of me, go, go," Chavez said automatically, doing a dozen calculations about what the line of sight must be. They were caught in the flat until the tree line, and for any mortal human that might be a lethal problem. Chavez pulled them close to her chest, heads all ducked low because that was a decidedly different vulnerability, and they hastened like some three-legged race. More pops, and she felt them against the meat of her back and shoulders like stinging punches. Shit, that was going to bruise. Night scopes and advanced ammo for sure, it was always the militia nuts with the best equipment.

Dani cried out, sharp, and a dark splotch of blood landed on the snow, a bullet grazing her through the parka.

"Fuck it, she's gonna get her head blown off," Rambeau said, and stripped off her gloves.

"Nick, careful." Chavez tried to shepherd her along. They were so close to the tree line, they could make it.

Rambeau stopped. "I got this."

There was no room to argue. Chavez bent double over Dani and the surge of electricity crackled white-hot over her back, pulsing towards the base. The air seared dry and lit up like noon. It was breathtaking, like stepping into a bright desert.

"Move," Rambeau said, her voice distorted as if through a bad telephone line, radiant as the sun.

Chavez couldn't help but look, always drawn to the awesome beauty -- a moth to the flame. Bright waves of energy crashed off her and into the distance, felling the storm of bullets as they came. White-blue-purple snaps of electricity played among one another, testing the ice, the low clouds. It could only last so long. Chavez gathered up Dani and sprinted for the opposite bank.

There was a larger pop from the base, weaponry bigger than bullets, and then Rambeau launched herself backwards like a gusting wind, skidding into the snow just shy of the sheltering skeleton pines as everything went dark, less a dying of the light than a switch turned off. Spots danced in Chavez's vision as she pulled Rambeau close, and threw down the pack for the first aid kit.

"What the hell?" She'd never seen her this weak after an emission. Her hands felt anxiously for a wound.

"Motherfuckers shot an EMP grenade." Rambeau grimaced slowly, waving the gauze aside. She placed the palms of her hands in the snow instead, and they hissed steam. "I'll be fine. Eventually. God damn."

"Council's gonna ask for a write-up." Focus on the practicalities. Stay calm.

"Yeah, yeah. Cross that bridge when I get to it. Let's go." Rambeau wobbled to her feet, gingerly replacing her gloves, and took a few fast, shallow breaths. She met Chavez's worried gaze. "Don't give me that bad system mojo right now. It's fine. I'll recharge off the generator."

Chavez pursed her lips. All right. Their only option was to keep moving forward. Their snowmobiles were hidden over the ridge and from there it was a straight shot back to the outpost. With any luck the militia had neither the motivation nor gas to track them that far. Bad luck came in three's, but she'd lost count.

***

Bucky flexed his left fingers as his nerves threatened to race ahead. The remains of Avengers Tower, Stark Tower, rose jagged like a dagger to the clouds. The top floors were shorn off, taking with it the helipad. Otherwise it was remarkably intact, the glass exterior shatter-proof even against the apocalypse. Which begged the question of how to enter. Was the Eye really here? Frigid seawater lapped around the edges of the tower and between the broken-up ice floe they had hopscotched over to get to this block. Even if Bucky was inclined to dive, beneath the surface lay unimaginable and unpredictable wreckage. He craned his neck up. In sunnier days there were plenty of ledges and handholds, all now covered with icy brine. One of the scavengers took a whack with an ice pick, which bounced off harmlessly.

"It's impenetrable on purpose," Bucky muttered.

"Impenetrable." Rumlow crossed his arms casually, one gloved finger resting on the safety of his gun as if that was the real threat. "Now that's just not true, or you wouldn't have trekked all this way. So go on, Soldier. Let us in."

Bucky scowled to hide his bubbling anxiety. There was a chance this wouldn't work. Then what? Before he could chase down five different nightmare scenarios he inched to the edge of the ice and reached out his left hand to the glass. The Tower was cold to the touch and he registered the density, the hardness of the glass. But that wasn't all. There was the faintest hum, like standing too close to high voltage wires. The reactor was still live.

"FRIDAY?" he prompted, and it sure was a strange thing to say in the frozen wind amid a deserted city.

"Sergeant Barnes, welcome back," a voice returned from within the window panes and it was so familiar he could've wept. His reflection smiled.

"Holy shit," a scavenger murmured behind him, and Bucky's smile faded.

"It's good to hear you, too. Was there another visitor here, they maybe left something behind?"

"Accessing logs … A time-space disturbance error was registered in your suite, systems failed and rebooted. I'm afraid I have no further data."

So it was true. Wait. _His_ suite? How had she gotten all the way here, inside?

"FRIDAY, I need access to the Tower, what've you got?"

"The lower entrance is inaccessible."

"Yeah, I see that. Maybe something more, uh, creative?"

"The 43rd floor is open."

Bucky sighed. "Something on _this_ level?"

"Breaking and entering requires an emergency override request. May I know the nature of your emergency?"

Typical Stark system. "The end of the world."

"Thank you. Sergeant Barnes, please step back."

Bucky frowned. For a moment nothing happened. Then he heard a shrill note, growing higher, higher -- he winced, too much like a noise from his past -- and the row of windows cracked and splintered at the resonant frequency. Seawater sloshed partly over the window ledge and spilled into the Tower.

They were in.

"Looks like you're taking a couple fellas up to your suite," Rumlow purred.

***

Steve wrapped the winch around the chunk of concrete, then squinted down the steep trough of melted snow to the open garage door and the expectant Peterbilt. They'd laid broken planks of wood from the weapons pallets into the slope but it was going to be a rough go. Hence the winch. If his grip slipped, at least the whole rig wouldn't go crashing through the other side of the garage. An ancient rusted trailer sat off to the side, waiting to be strapped to the bed. It was going to be a balancing nightmare and a precarious setup but this wasn't a long-haul on a winding road; the rig could handle the instability for a couple miles.

Steve followed the winch line back to the trailer bed, testing the planks as he went. The cab had been fitted with a curved piece of scrap to function as a plow and the windshield was reduced to a single strip on the driver side, the rest sealed with scrap. The side doors were still vulnerable but they'd run out of material. It would have to work.

He flexed his hands in their gloves. "Ready?" he shouted back up the slope.

"Take her up!" MJ replied, and the scavengers readied around where the winch line looped.

Steve shook out his arms and sincerely hoped he wasn't about to embarrass himself further. He may be a washed-up "ded-head" but he sure as hell could still lift a semi-truck cab up an icy 45-degree incline. Right. He grabbed the sturdy tow bar between the rear wheels, his face brushing the rear bumper, and lifted.

It was lighter than he expected and he eased off. Too high would damage the hook-up equipment. One step. Another. The rig eased out of the garage like a bear from hibernation. Nearing the top of the slope, the full weight of the machinery and ever-present gravity worked against him. His bad knee throbbed and the heel of his foot slipped -- "Hold!" MJ shouted. The winch line pulled taut, giving him a fraction to re-secure his footing. There may be two I's in Captain America but not in Avengers -- Tony's voice bright in his ear. Yeah, yeah.

One set, two sets of chain-wrapped tires level and he let the cab down gently, rolling it forward to bring up the rest of the trailer bed. The trailer itself was a husk of a haphazard container and Steve wasn't entirely sure how well it would withstand the coming onslaught. It screeched across the trailer bed as they guided it aboard, then tied it down with chains and knotted belts of spare material. Good enough. One of the scavengers set down pallet planks as a ramp.

"All right, let's fucking ride! Let's go!" they shouted.

Whoops and hollers and the gunning roar of snowmobiles answered. It wasn't exactly the rallying speech Steve had been expecting, but maybe the less said the better.

"You fuck this up, you're dead," someone said solemnly to him behind a helmet painted with a grinning goblin.

Yeah. If Steve screwed this up, they were all dead.

"You won't." MJ was at his side. "Better get going, driver." She revved her snowmobile and pulled into the queue that was slowly arranging itself inside the trailer.

Steve focused on the burn leaving his muscles and slogged through the snow, swung open the driver's door. He frowned as he leveraged himself up and in, the seat sighing in protest. "Shouldn't you be in the back?"

Paul looked at him through the visor on his helmet, one hand across the semi-automatic in his lap. "Last time I had family members counting on you, they died. MJ has a whole lot of faith and I'm here to make sure it's well-placed."

"Fair enough. And I'm sorry, if it's worth anything. There's no changing that."

"Talk's cheap. You want to apologize, fine, but do what you came here to do."

Steve nodded, then glanced at the gun. "You're not gonna shoot at me again, are you?"

Paul half-grinned and turned the barrel towards the passenger window. "Only if you give me a new reason, gramps."

The rig started smooth and sure, just like she had in the garage a few hours ago. It was a shame to send her off on a suicide mission like this, but she wasn't fit for the road like the outpost trucks. The engine would be junk within a day. Better to be put to use.

One horn blast and then he shifted gears. The longer they waited, the more chance a scout could see them coming. The key was to start fast and keep the pedal to the metal, straight shot into Hydra's position. Compared to what the machine was built for, this load was light. A simple, careful touch was critical or they'd all go sliding right across the ice. Don't think about the worst-case. You've done this before. Muscle memory.

Easy.

Right on down the line.

Ten miles.

Fifteen minutes.

Time was a funny thing. He used to believe the perception that it was fixed, discrete, measured reliably with a timepiece you could keep in your pocket, on your wrist, the wall of your home. But you couldn't keep time. Cogs stuck, batteries died. Memories faded or changed or were lost forever, bodies stayed the same for decades and then aged in a day. Minutes could pass as quickly as seconds or as slow as an hour.

The CB radio was silent next to him; even if it could work, it was a liability now. Hydra would be listening, this close to their camp. He'd said his piece. The shuttle launch pads would be syncing by now, readying for countdown based on the mothership's orbit.

"Would you take them again? Doom’s pills?" Paul's words grounded him. The rig's speedometer hovered near fifty as they approached a low-hanging cloud of smoke on the horizon, small specks of vehicles.

Steve considered his future. To forget again the Bucky of these later years? His friends? The weight of grief and loss?

"I don't know," he said, because it was easier than admitting he was weak.

Paul nodded slowly. "You're a survivor. You think, isn't that enough. Now you have to carry the memories too, every day, and it crushes you slow, grinds you down." He scoffed. "Forgetting is easy."

"Did you--?"

"Who hasn't, if you can afford it. Or steal it. I know people who kill for less." Paul shifted. "Thing is, sometimes you're the last person. I forget Gwen, then she's really dead. Poof, gone. No one's out here surviving just for themselves, except maybe Hydra. We're all surviving for somebody we love."

"You're sitting shotgun on a pretty risky mission," Steve noted wryly.

"Yeah, well, fuck Hydra."

Fair enough.

The siege encampment came into view quickly, all at once, and his adrenaline spiked. Whatever fortification the other scavengers were holed up in was buried enough to be out of sight. At a glance there were a few bulldozers, the ubiquitous snowmobiles, and a few baffling pieces of machinery he guessed had once belonged in a farmer's field. Time did another of its funny tricks and slowed even as they barreled down the last mile. Paul fastened the visor on his helmet and propped the automatic on the passenger window sill.

Steve could tell the minute the encampment realized the semi truck headed their way was less a wandering off-route unfortunate and more a vengeful battering ram. Incoming fire began to ping off the reinforced cab. The promise of violent conflict sharpened every detail -- the smell of the seat leather, the sound of his breath. He kept his foot on the gas. A little closer, not yet, not yet … Steve pulled the horn in a long deafening bellow and gently tapped the brakes. That was the signal. Paul slunk lower in his seat, making sure no one got a visual. There was only one visual necessary right now. Steve reached back for his shield behind the driver's seat, then hit the switch for the nanosuit.

He looked over at Paul as the suit fell into place, and searched for something inspiring to say, some words of wisdom. Instead Paul nodded once, then turned back to the window, lining up for a shot. This crew didn't need Captain America for inspiration, they needed Steve Rogers to blast some Hydra mercs. And that he certainly could do.

Steve jammed the brakes in earnest now, careful not to jack-knife. In one fluid movement he didn't think he could still pull off, he opened the driver side door, dropped to the step-bar, and launched out. He drew fire immediately and smiled to himself. An arc blast took the legs out from under one of the terrifying farm tractors, and he flung the shield into an oncoming snowmobile. Bullets sparked off him in a metallic spray. Behind the cacophony he heard the rev of snowmobiles and then suddenly gunfire was being returned. A bulldozer went up in flames: grenade. He stooped to retrieve his shield, two more snowmobiles coming in fast--

The rocket knocked Steve flat on his back, breathless.

His ears sang, then they cleared and he realized it was the suit beeping alarms. _C'mon, get up, old man_. He rolled and saw a death's head helmet reloading the rocket launcher at close range. Get the shield, where was it, where was it -- he scrabbled in the snow -- there. The next rocket hit a split second later, square on the vibranium. It sent him reeling and put an inch-long hairline crack in the top of the battered shield. The suit's alarms were becoming more urgent. There was only so much power left in the aged arc reactor. Might as well go out with a bang. He shot out a phaser beam. The good news was it took out the rocket launcher; the bad news was the nanosuit promptly fell apart. Steve scrambled behind the burnt husk of a disabled combine and shivered at the cold.

A bulldozer crashed to the ground with its tire tread burning as a gang of Hydra militia fled on their snowmobiles, chased down by two scavengers. They were _winning_. 

"Steve!"

The scream traveled and he turned. Back at the truck, MJ straddled her snowmobile and was struggling to pull Paul from the cab. He ducked behind the shield as best he could for cover and wove his way to her. As vulnerable as he might be without the nanosuit, he was a good deal better off than the scavengers.

"Was he hit?" Steve's gut swooped as he saw the limp body.

"Shot cracked his helmet, can't get him down, stuck on--"

A Hydra snowplow gunned its engine with a roar and Steve watched across the cab as it slid towards them, gaining. Paul's helmet was spiderwebbed, a bullet half-lodged in the side instead of in his skull. His boot had gotten wedged awkwardly under the seat. Steve glanced up. The plow was going to hit. Fuck. He braced himself over Paul for the best angle and yanked with numb fingers. A sharp crack and Paul came to, screaming in agony. Better a broken ankle than a corpse.

"Go! Go!" Steve shouted, lowering Paul down to the back of MJ's snowmobile. She was a survivor too: she gunned it free and clear.

The roar of the plow was nearly on him, close enough to see the goggles of the driver. Steve pivoted to jump off and away -- his balance was off and his bad knee wobbled, stiff from the cold.

His foot slipped.

It was such a silly thing, Steve thought, in the split second that stretched like a minute as he realized he wasn't going to make it. Such bad timing for the indignities of old age. A burst of frustration, a sigh of disappointment.

The cab wrenched sideways with a screech.


	10. Chapter 10

The Tower was just how they'd left it, Bucky thought, as he exited the stairwell to what had been his and Steve's floor. It was musty and the emergency lighting was powered by virtue of the semi-immortal arc generator encased in the basement, impervious even to the apocalypse. But the carpeting was clean and the paint unblemished, the doors properly shut on their hinges. A home preserved. He stopped between the two suites. Steve's door had a tiny Captain America cartoon sticker on it, courtesy of Sam's sense of humor. The neighboring suite said only "J. BARNES" in plain lettering on the lintel.

Rumlow gestured to it. "In case you forgot, right?" He laughed once, short and dry, and at his signal Bucky found himself at the business end of several assorted handguns. Rumlow thumbed off his own safety like flicking a speck of lint. "Your brains must be more fried than I thought if you didn't see this coming."

Breathe. Zen shit. "Do it and FRIDAY gasses the whole floor dead."

"You're bluffing."

"I assure you he's not," FRIDAY chimed in. "Mr. Stark has very rigorous residential security."

Rumlow glanced around the hall but no entity divulged itself. "Fuck it. I got this." He nodded at Bucky, holding his gun level, and called to the rest of the squad: "Break down the damn door, clear the room. And don't fucking touch anything."

Two scavengers kicked it in and entered cautiously, two more behind. The last of Rumlow's crew hung back in the hall. Bucky's mouth went dry, and the present sharpened into focus. There was a precise dance to execute. He prayed his reflexes, and more importantly his nerves, were up to it.

"FRIDAY, tripwire," he said so nonchalantly that Rumlow didn't even blink.

The single emergency light in the hall flipped red as a security gate slammed down, sealing off his wrecked door frame. So he hadn't totally bluffed. And it was nice to finally use a trigger word himself, Bucky thought, as he ducked and grabbed the nearest unfortunately not-trapped scavenger for cover. _Disarm, break the knee_. He'd had Tripwire installed in case Hydra found a new way to activate his Winter Soldier programming. Steve hated it, of course, but those first few months here it'd helped him sleep easier. If he was going to be in prison he may as well play warden.

Rumlow was on the move. The second scavenger shot scared and Bucky placed a one-two in his shoulder and calf that left him on the floor with the other. Rumlow scooped up the scavenger's handgun where it skittered free and unloaded the clip, bullets pinging off Bucky's left arm and pockmarking the corridor. Playing defense gave space for Rumlow to advance. Bucky took aim with his right and Rumlow dodged -- compensate, anticipate -- Three embedded over Rumlow's stomach, in the protective suit. Sturdier than it looked. Then he was out of bullets and it was hand-to-hand.

They knew each others' styles well. But it had been a long while, and Bucky had learned a few tricks. A twist on a jujitsu punch and he knocked Rumlow sideways into a crumpled pile. His left arm recalibrated with a whir. He wasn't the only one with new tricks. Rumlow punched up from the floor -- what were those, knives? -- his glove gouged deep across Bucky's thigh. Missed the femoral. The knives screeched against his arm and he blocked another jab.

He was stronger, faster than Rumlow. Could've overpowered him at the start. Bucky knew this.

And yet the old fear was ingrained in him.

Rumlow saw it too, and it made him bolder. He drove Bucky into the wall, plaster cracking as he pinned the metal wrist between two of his glove knives. _Twist away, miss the knee, catch it on the hip, bone-to-bone._ He had to do _something_. But pinning Rumlow meant no bite guard for the next wipe or a laxative in the nutrient slurry or a full cavity search by the STRIKE team or --

The Soldier never broke out in full-body sweats.

His ears rang, a punch under his chin sending his skull against the wall. 

Bucky blinked. It wasn't true, it wasn't _then_ anymore. Over Rumlow's shoulder: J. BARNES. 

Rumlow flicked open a butterfly blade tucked in his belt and went for his throat.

_Fight back!_ His whole body screamed. Brute instinct took over, a different kind of programming, the urge to survive -- for himself? for Steve? -- more powerful than fear. He succumbed to it, the chattering hysterics in his mind muted.

Bucky grabbed the hilt of the blade, part of it slicing through the webbing between his thumb ( _the asset feels no pain, I'm not the asset_ ), and turned it back as he wrenched his body to the side. Rumlow staggered off-balance and Bucky yanked his left arm from the pin. He stabbed Rumlow in the side with surgical precision and efficiency, hitting the sweet spot between the panels of his suit. A jawline punch with his left fist sent blood, bone and teeth flying, flesh crunching under the metal with a sound and resistance familiar from his nightmares. _Don't scream_.

Rumlow went down, limp.

Bucky tasted blood from his own broken nose. His left arm whirred plates into realignment, prepping. He stopped. _Kill him, kill him, finish the_ \--

Stop.

He grit his teeth against the residual imperative and it ebbed, leaving him back inside himself and shaking. The two other scavengers moaned on the floor in fear, distant shouting and banging from behind the emergency security gate. He waited one second, then another, flashing hot-cold like a fever. He was alive. He was himself. Okay. Okay.

He stood in the hall and considered Rumlow's prone body.

Then he turned and went into Steve's apartment.

It was furnished and tidy, not a book or record out of place, only missing the items they'd taken in their go bags. So much never moved to the bunker. The echoes of Steve were strong here. Little personal touches like the scribbled sketches from Central Park on the fridge, an old framed Brooklyn Dodgers pennant from 1935, a discarded pile of hand wraps from boxing lessons, not that he needed them. Steve's physical absence was as though someone had taken out the whole couch, or the bed. It had always been there, and then it wasn't. Maybe this was what haunted places meant.

Bucky paused in the bedroom doorway. A pile of his old gym clothes were on the floor, waiting for Steve to gripe at them later. Loose change and a pair of motorcycle keys decorated the dresser top, both useless. An activist had mailed him a POW MIA patch and it sat there still, applicable to many more now. The blinds were pulled as always. Who the hell would put Captain America in a room with a wall-to-wall window, sight lines plain as day. But none of these things he noticed now.

Slung around the left bottom bedpost, as if casually left by accident, was an amulet.

The Eye of Agamotto.

His heart leapt in his throat. It had been one thing when all this was hearsay and an old wives tale, but now the thing was real and inexplicably here, right in front of him. He hesitated, dumbstuck in the doorway.

And wasn't that the mistake.

Bucky heard the first shot and there was nowhere to go. He dove to the right, to the carpet at the foot of the bed, grabbing for the amulet. He took the bullet, the white-hot pinch of pain. The chain broke around the post and the amulet itself flew off in the opposite direction. Two other bullets took out chunks in the plaster as the shooter approached. Bucky panted on the floor and struggled to turn himself around, could he even reach -- His chest seized in pain and he was no better than dead weight. Fuck, fuck. He focused on taking one rattling breath at a time and ran a hand over his front. No exit wound.

It was a perfect shot. Typical Rumlow.

Fear and impotent rage flooded into him, raw and bright. The serum would work out the bullet eventually -- he knew, oh he knew -- but not nearly fast enough to stop him from drowning in his own blood.

"Down, doggie," Rumlow rattled, limping into the bedroom bloodied and crooked with a smile missing its bottom half.

Bucky spat blood at him. It was blasphemous that Rumlow should be in their bedroom, of all places. This wasn't his to see.

Rumlow leveled his handgun. "Shoulda killed me. Now … Now I let you watch. Cause when I go back, you ain't ever getting out."

Bucky bit his tongue so hard it mixed with the coppery slickness already in his throat. He wasn't going to cry, he wasn't going to plead and beg. Not to Rumlow, not ever again. He thought of Steve, out there, maybe dead by now. _I tried_. Billions would be saved by going back. Hydra could be defeated again. It would be okay. That Steve, that earlier Steve, had been building a life without him. If there was a small mercy in the world, maybe Romanoff would find the Winter Soldier first and kill him quick. She could hide the truth from Steve, protect him. Or Rumlow could bury him in the cryo vault for another century. It wouldn't matter.

Rumlow bent to the floor, to the Eye. "Hail Hydra."

Bucky turned his gaze under the bed, void of the sniper rifle he'd taken with him, and only Steve's little fireproof box of keepsakes remained. Old photographs, newspaper clippings, buttons, his dog tags. It was funny the things people held on to, owning part of their past like a souvenir that said _I was here, I was real then too_. At least he had this, at the end.

Hollow silence.

Then:

"It doesn’t work," Rumlow said flatly, and Bucky tore his gaze away. Hope and disappointment warred in his chest, and he cough ragged and raw. It couldn't be. How?

Rumlow held the amulet flat in his hand, expression stormy. "Piece of junk," he snarled and worked the clasps free, opening the Eye to reveal the inner green gemstone. "The fuck is--"

Whatever rest he was about to say was swallowed by a choking sound that escalated to a scream as the gemstone shone brighter and brighter where his fingertips touched it. The room pulsed with a low whooshing sound, like wind through tree branches. Bucky stared in transfixed horror as Rumlow's scarred face wrinkled and shrank in on itself like a dried-out sponge, scream growing shrill and then hoarse, eyes bulging, his tactical suit deflating to hang on skin now stretched thin over skeletal bones, aged and brittle.

It didn't stop, and Rumlow began to disintegrate piece by piece. Desiccated flesh peeled away and his eyes fell back into their sockets. The individual bones of his fingers dropped to the floor. There was only the sound of the pulsing wind now, and Bucky's own breath was harsh and fearful, loud in his ears. Rumlow's grinning skull and bones quietly collapsed in a heap within his clothes.

The gemstone shimmered innocently in the mortal dust. The air seemed to ripple in time with the whooshing, the radius increasing like a pebble tossed into a pond. Whatever had been released by opening the Eye wasn't going to stop. Bucky pushed himself up and pulled along the carpet one hand at a time, his one good lung spasming with every excruciating motion. It was getting harder to breathe, his vision dizzy. A ripple broke over his body and he faltered, uncoordinated, his heart doing a double-thump skip like he'd lost a second or two. Like time had glitched.

He might well encounter the same fate as Rumlow, Bucky thought in passing as he reached for the stone. He could touch it and turn to dust or he could leave it and bleed out, sucked into whatever rupture was broiling. Pick your deadly poison. But the stone had been here, specifically here, for a reason. Like it was waiting for him. He had to hope for something, anything, better, if only to enjoy it a few final minutes.

Bucky grabbed the stone.

It felt like The Chair at first -- thrown out of himself with a huge surge of -- no, not pain -- energy -- his eyes open but seeing only dazzling geometries, anchorless -- bright fractal shapes of the vastness of time and space unspooling and remerging like a revelation, colors indescribable, pulsing in time with the whooshing sound -- the sense of another being, another presence, watching --

"You. Interesting."

Bucky blinked. He was … in a dim library study, standing before a man who was half-reclined in a massive armchair, a man who was inexplicably wearing the Eye amulet over his bathrobe and slippers. It was very quiet except for a clock. Bucky glanced down and saw he was still holding the stone. And he must not have a bullet in his chest cavity.

"What happened?" he asked, equal parts hope and dread. "Is this … Is this the past?"

"Yes and no. I'm Steven Strange, you're James Barnes; I'm in the past, you're in the future, if we must use such limited terminology. Consider this our common line." Strange held up the amulet.

"I… I went back in time."

"No, I'm merely visiting you in the future. The time stone requires certain maneuvers on my part. I see now I'll have Claire place it bedside in Avengers Tower for your retrieval, and all will be aligned."

He struggled to follow. But … "You put it there?"

"You found it there, so yes, she will put it there."

"I don't under--"

"No, of course not; cyclical time paradoxes are best left to the masters."

Bucky's patience snapped. "This was supposed to reverse everything before the Impact! The future is fucked, can't you see that too? If this thing is so powerful then it can reset, save billions of lives!"

"No." Strange paused, and steepled his fingers. "It is precisely because it is so powerful that simply rewinding the timeline is not possible. A river flows, and it may eddy in loops and run back upon itself, but the water always flows through."

"Then what was the point of all this," Bucky asked, deflated. Despair clutched him again.

"Are you being deliberately obtuse? You’re in possession of one of the Universe's most sought-after instruments. It's not for personal time-travelling ethics experiments. Rewinding the earthly apocalypse merely postpones it. Death and atrocities are a part of human life, Barnes. Rather than change the past, we are forced to accept it."

"I don't want to accept it," he said numbly.

"Well, that sounds like a personal problem." Strange raised a teacup. "And better men than you have let that twist their souls."

"So that's it. There's nothing I can do, the Earth is doomed? Steve--" he broke off because to voice it would send him to pieces.

Strange leaned forward, held his attention. "Perhaps it's not up to you."

_There's no I in Avengers_ , rose to his mind unbidden. He thought of the shuttles, the seed bank, the rescue network, the fresh brightness of Chavez and Rambeau. Face it. Humanity was shooting forth new sprouts, ever-resilient. Steve's obsessive guilt, the depression -- those weren't things Bucky could fix forever, even if time rewound. They were tied up in wounds much deeper than the Impact. He of all people should've seen that clearly, should've taken his own advice from years-old arguments. It was easier to play blind. To hold out hope for a fix-it that avoided loss. 

So this was what acceptance felt like: Caustic. Bitter.

The symbols hanging in the air shimmered and began to fade.

"Our chat is at an end. I wish you all the best, don't fuck it up," Strange said crisply.

"Wait, but I--"

A force punched him square in the stomach and he lurched back and suddenly he was falling, falling into the spiraling fractals that resonated through his bones. The stone pulsed through him and he felt himself back on the carpet in the Tower, paralyzed, caught up in the whooshing energy and rippling time-skips, lost in the neon geometries.

He was dying.

And yet -- not. The stone’s power held him under. But then he imagined it like Strange said, a river. So he could swim, couldn't he? The current was too strong to fight but there were other branches, other portals.  _ It’s not up to you. _ He knew, then, the path to take. The only viable path. The stone burned into his palm.

***

Chavez skidded into the garage and hustled Dani from her snowmobile as Rambeau parked behind them. Rambeau slumped forward, exhausted, and peeled herself off the snowmobile seat one limb at a time.

"Go on to the shuttle tunnel and use the generator hookup there. I'm gonna initiate the sequence," Chavez instructed, having noted Barnes's snowmobile was still missing. She checked her watch for the twentieth time. If they missed the launch window--

A pulse stuttered the air. Her watch jump-skipped the seconds. Chavez caught her breath and looked back at Rambeau, who put a hand to her heart, puzzled.

"What was that?" Dani asked, a bright spot of blood on her otherwise white parka.

Another pulse rippled through.

Chavez watched the air itself quaver out and away into the distance beyond the garage, another wave approaching from the east. The fiber of time and space was shuddering. _Could it be_ _?_ She reached out a hand and the entropic tension was thick as soup, gathering exponentially. The generator coughed and the outpost's electricity flickered.

"Merry?"

Then it all came to a head. A sudden swirling blast of light blew out the garage overheads. Someone screamed, or it sounded like one. A gyrating portal thinned and widened, looping like a broken wheel, sparks of energy flying off. Impossible -- Chavez watched a man collapse through it, hardly daring to believe her eyes. But where had--?

With a snap the portal broke, a fragile rubberband, and left them in the dim natural light from the frozen windows. There was a sound like a hurricane through a forest and with it came the time-space ripples, faster now, stuttering everything. Chavez fought the current, every movement a push, as she went to the man. It couldn't be. Could it?

And it _was_ Barnes, she saw. Alive but entranced, his pupils rolled back. Gray streaks in his hair grew in before her eyes, aging. A single bullet rolled jerkily onto the floor. His metal fist clasped something glowing and green: the source.

An infinity stone.

Chavez clapped a hand to her mouth and sank to her knees. _Mama_. She composed herself and brushed aside the ripples, like smoothing wrinkles from a sheet. _If there was a way to fix all this_ , he'd said. The equinox alignment. The system had been giving her the message. His grip was strong, and the plates were hot, in danger of welding together and trapping the stone. Quickly, or it would be too late.

"Let go, Barnes, it's Chavez," she shouted over the noise, prying at his fingers. The whooshing was omnipresent now, a cosmic suction. If it came to his hand or the fabric of the universe, that was a no-brainer. "You hear me? You wanna lose this arm again? Let go!"

The plates relaxed and Chavez peeled them back, revealed the stone.

Hello, old friend.

The chaotic instability tempered as it flowed into her, a shiver she felt from her fingertips to her toes, the glow dulling as the ripples receded. The feeling of an ancient presence looking over her shoulder, as benign and maternal in this reality as in every other she'd known. It told her its story in a whisper. And then it was just a pebble with a little greenish hue to it. Quiet.

Chavez pulled out her necklace chain and fit the stone into the locket, rubbed it over with a thumb.

"Your ma’s locket," Rambeau wondered, limping to where Barnes had sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Him? _He_ was a conduit? Oh I gotta hear his debriefing on this shit.”

“What just happened?” Dani whispered.

Rambeau shook her head again. "Well, we witnessed the preservation of space-time continuum."

"Is this-- now?" Barnes muttered, blinking owlishly, his arm whirring sporadically as he staggered to his feet.

Chavez clapped him on the back. "Yeah it is, Barnes. C'mon. Focus on me, that's it, that's it. You’re good. You did real good, okay? Do you know your name?"

"Barnes … Uh. James Buchanan Barnes."

"And who am I?"

He frowned, sorting it out. "Captain Chavez, Cleveland Outpost. Lieutenant Rambeau … I was trying to find you. Help the kid. Did I … Did I make it in time?"

Rambeau raised her eyebrows. "You got where you needed to be, Barnes. Don't think cause you used some fancy infinity stone that you're back on my good side though."

"You're all right." Chavez tapped her watch. "But we got a shuttle launch in five minutes."

"Shuttle …" Barnes blinked heavily. "Yeah, I-- The stone, did you …"

A pause. Wait. Too quiet. Chavez met Rambeau's eyes at the same time, the horrific realization dawning.

"The generator!"

"Fuck!"

"Get to the control room." Chavez pointed at Barnes, who was on the verge of drifting again. "Bucky!" His eyes snapped clear. "Control room, reboot the launch sequence, now!" To his credit, he didn't ask any further questions and was out the door.

Chavez propped up Rambeau and hustled to the shuttle tunnel, Dani beside her still in her snowmobile helmet.

"There's not enough solar stored to backup the seed--"

"I know," Chavez snapped in frustration. The space-time portal had likely fried the connectors.

She entered the shuttle body and strapped Dani into one of the passenger seats as Rambeau went to the alarming freezers. Between the rocket blastoff and atmosphere exit, the temps weren't going to hold. They might salvage a handful of seeds, if they were lucky. Whole forests and crops would go extinct. The disappointment was acute. A chime and distant rumble meant Barnes had managed the control room's emergency generator and reboot. The intercom crackled to life.

“I’m scared,” Dani whispered, her hands shaking as she clutched the seat belts.

Chavez stowed her helmet and held her shoulders, squatting level. “It’s okay to be scared. This atmosphere doesn’t like to give things up. But this shuttle’s gonna keep us all safe. The toughest part is the first few minutes, then it’s smooth sailing. And the view…” Chavez whistled low. “All right?”

Dani closed her eyes and nodded tightly.

"We're up. One minute to launch. Are you in?" Barnes asked through the intercom.

Rambeau stood stiffly and pressed a button on the ceiling. "In, copy that."

Chavez buckled her own seatbelt and tried not to think about the seed bank slowly self-destructing. "Let's get the fuck out of here." She frowned at Rambeau, who was still up. "Strap in."

"Can't do that, Merry." Rambeau smiled sadly and, before Chavez could utter a single word, placed her scorched bare hand on the solar battery panel by the freezers. "I'm sorry."

"No!" Chavez shouted, fumbling with the belt, as Rambeau sank to the floor, freezer alarms going silent.

“Monica?” Dani craned around, panicked.

"Thirty seconds. All systems go." The rumbling increased.

Chavez clutched at Rambeau, manhandling her into a seat, breathing labored now. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," Chavez whispered fiercely through her clenched teeth.

“Oh god,” Dani gasped and leaned over to help with the buckles against Rambeau's dead weight.

"Had to," Rambeau slurred, tears making her eyes glassy. "Mission comes first, had to. Those damn magnolias, she loved them so much. Every spring. Smells like lemon candy…'

"Shh, you're losing too much blood, just try to relax."

"Anchor me, Merry."

"No. No, don't fucking ask me that now." It was too late to grab the Van de Graff, as if she could even use it mid-launch.

_Ten_ \--

"I'm not gonna make it to the ship."

"Nick--"

"I can. I can use the sun. You gotta anchor."

"Please don't leave me."

_Five_ \--

"I can do it. We can do it, baby."

Chavez forced a breath in. "Okay. Okay."

_Liftoff_.

She refastened their seat buckles in time to be pinned back under the enormous press of gravity. The shuttle shook with atmospheric turbulence, hurtling free of the Earth, its cargo once more secure. Chavez found and gripped Rambeau's hand in her own as the view out the porthole turned to layers of gray clouds. Focus. Which meant she didn't look as Rambeau began to fade apart with a sound like the buzz below high tension wires on a hot still day. Focus.

"Your name's Monica Maria Rambeau. Nick. You had a pet turtle named Malcolm and, uh, and you love pina coladas without the rum. Your mom's name was Maria too and you said one time she beat up a boy in your front yard so you didn't have to."

The clouds grew brighter. Hold on, hold on. It smelled of ozone. Dani was weeping. You can do this, you can fucking do this.

"Your favorite edition of Advanced Physics is the one with the cracked spine your uncle gave you on your thirteenth birthday. You used to tell me pressure makes diamonds. Our first training mission you crashed the simulator and Lieutenant West chewed you out so bad you had ten beers at the Broken Spoke."

Sunlight spilled through. It was startlingly bright after the months of gray and cold, and Chavez flinched, like coming up from a cave. Light poured through the shuttle window in a flood. Let it be enough, please let it be enough.

"You said this wasn't how you go out. This mission isn't fucking finished, not by a long shot."

The air grew dense and her open palm prickled as if with sunburn. She gulped through her tight throat, cursing it, and willed Rambeau before her in her mind's eye, from the tips of her toes she still liked to paint when she could, to the downy fuzz of her shaved head when her hair began to grow in.

"You said some day after all this is over we take that ship to the Outer Limits and just push through. See the edge of the universe. Places nobody ever touched or dreamed of, things you couldn't describe. Places only we can go. I'm telling you, I know, when we look back where we came from… You'll say-- You'll say it looks like fireflies on a Louisiana summer night. But it has to be you there with me. It has to be--"

A hand squeezed hers back.

"I'm here. I'm here."


	11. Chapter 11

Bucky scrambled into the control room and did what he used to be excellent at, which was compartmentalizing all the surrounding insanity into a small box for later processing, and focusing only on the single task at hand. The backup generator for local critical systems had seen better days and it cycled noisily with a sound like a busted muffler. What a fucking mess. The launchpad monitors were auto-piloted by sensors and pre-loaded code, but on backup power the rocket engine itself required authorized ignition. He keyed in his unique identifier -- LAUNCH SEQUENCE APPROVED -- and stopped short at his reflection in one of the darkened spare monitors. 

Touched his face, the strands of his hair. Held up his flesh hand. It was undeniable: the stone had aged him. How much? Hard to say. Ten, fifteen years. It was striking. He pressed where Rumlow had shot him. There was a little knob of scar tissue. He placed his right hand on the metal chair and pushed, curious. The aluminum bent; the serum was still active. At what capacity was anyone's guess.

He shook his head in wonder,  _ process it later _ , and pivoted to the comms panel. Albany Outpost would be launching any minute but there was a good chance Sharon, as Northeast Regional Captain, would've kept the inter-shuttles channels online. Steve was still out there.

The message indicator blinked red.

Bucky forced himself to wait, and switched to the shuttle intercom. "One minute to launch. Are you in?"

Rambeau's voice: "In, copy that."

His finger hovered over the message replay button as he watched the final launch stats scroll through. The backup generator groaned. "Thirty seconds. All systems go."

The autopilot countdown commenced and he brought up the missed call from a blocked signal. Playback. Must be a distress--

_ No. _

His knees went weak and he closed his eyes, rested his forehead on the top of the comms panel in an attitude that was as close to prayer as he'd gotten in a century.

Steve.  _ Alive. _

He stopped the recording, replayed from the top, and this time he listened.

"Take the shuttle," Steve said, sharp and confident and such a god damn martyr, as the rocket blasted off and shook the outpost.

The computers lit with green: system connections verified, boosters engaged, trajectory successful. The generator smelled faintly of smoke.  _ Hang in there _ .

Bucky kept the shuttle autopilot readout on one screen and brought up the call log on another. Blocked signal, failure to trace. Im-fucking-possible. He waited a beat for his right hand to settle. It was a reasonably safe assumption Steve was still in the Northeast. He checked the time code of the call, then brought up the regional surveillance map. Filtered for radio frequency emissions. Hotspots flared at the established outposts, with the odd trace or two at homesteads and supply routes. Refine by signal start and end times.

There was only one, near Raven Rock, Virginia. Raven Rock. Why did that sound familiar? He saw again the regional map in Rumlow's airport bunker. Eight tentacles.  _ Hydra _ .

Bucky flipped to the inter-shuttle comms line and typed a message to Sharon, not that the Security Council would put any skin back in the game with their shuttles safely lifted. Raven Rock was hours away on a good day with a full tank of gas. He needed something faster. 

Bucky turned off the control panels and locked the door on his way out, the outpost eager to shut down.

He grabbed a spare helmet from the garage rack and went to his workshop, to the hulking tarp-covered project. If there was any reason for a test drive, this was it. He pulled on the tarp's corner and it slid off the refurbished Skrull hovercraft. Carted away for repairs years ago, it had been left to gather dust in the outpost's garage, in dire need of new parts. 

He flipped the sensor panel cover on the exterior, the last obstacle. What was it Rambeau had said? He'd connected the input wrong …  _ Because Skrull were half colorblind with red and green wires. _ Bucky relied on his left hand to do the fine work -- scrape, cut, thread, twist, reconnect, again on the other side. He slammed the cover shut and forced himself to gently tap the sensor panel.

It lit with a ding and a click. Access granted.

Bucky gave a whoop of elation that echoed across the garage. Okay, okay, stay focused. He fastened his helmet and crammed himself into the one-man cockpit, fought off a sudden bout of claustrophobia, and booted up the system. He'd flown helicopters and a jet or two and at one point even a zeppelin but not like he'd ever flown one of these before. What a time to hope all those translated texts were right. The hovercraft hummed to life, rocking gently in gusts of wind as the main garage door opened. The console prompted him for destination coordinates and Bucky took a breath. Zen. Sure. Here went nothing.

***

Steve lay flat on his back in the snow, his ears ringing something awful. The collision had tossed him yards from the wreckage and his whole body ached. It was freezing. He turned his head gently. Hydra was overrun, and the scavengers hurriedly pushed through to the buried homestead and their loved ones. Once upon a time he would've been right along with them. They were banished to the frozen, abandoned earth and yet an inextinguishable flame burned in them still. Maybe in him, too, after all.

Steve groaned and fought gravity, rolled slowly and pushed himself up to his knees, off-balance and sharply woozy for a second. He probably needed medical attention. He was getting frostbite.

The tundra tremored slightly, followed by a distant omnipresent rumble like low thunder. A bomb. No. Earthquake?  _ The shuttles _ .

Across the horizon the rockets rose faintly in the distance, one to the west and another to the north, and invisible tens more across the rest of what remained of the continental United States. Steve sat back heavily as his chest constricted.  _ Bucky _ . Take the shuttle, he'd said, and meant every word. And yet. He tracked the western trail.  _ Keep him safe _ . He imagined the distance growing, now, the Earth receding, and it was all he could do not to stretch out his arms after it like a child, the yearning to bring close what was lost.

The shuttle disappeared into the lower blanket of clouds and then he was alone. There was a pained, rough animal noise that Steve realized was coming from him, like his innards being ripped out. Grief rushed forth, built up and battened down over years and years, now finally let loose like a cleansing flood, a physical exiting. He wept with big shuddering gasps, a jagged sound that hurt his lungs and burned his face where tears froze and melted and refroze. The enormous vacuum of not-having. He was as empty as he'd ever been.

And yet, and yet.

Time ticked on. There was a dim ember, a spark.

Steve clambered to his feet, like he had so many times before. The frozen tundra was a cruel and capricious place. A particularly merciless bully. He was too old and tired to start fresh. But he was alive, and that had to count for something. Stripped of everything, maybe he could relearn a thing or two from the scavengers and homesteaders who raged against hopelessness. The time of forgetting was over.

He put one foot in front of the other and wobbled towards the liberated homestead. There was a shout and a blurred figure pointed. At him, first, then higher, into the sky. A low buzz in the distance, growing louder. Not a snowmobile. Steve turned, exhausted. He was exposed and injured; whatever Hydra was sending in--

He squinted, frowning, because it didn't make any sense.

"Skrull!" someone yelled.

And it was indeed a Skrull hovercraft that sped rapidly into view, overshooting them by several yards before pinwheeling back and landing less-than-gracefully in a trench of snow and ice that bent the rear rudder. It certainly wasn't a Skrull pilot. Steve grabbed the nearest piece of debris with clumsy numb fingers, a chunk of bullet-scarred seat upholstry from the truck, as the cockpit punched open. Someone tumbled out and tossed their helmet aside. A human. An old man?

"Steve!"

"Don't shoot!" Steve screamed back to the homestead, and placed himself in the likeliest line of fire just to be sure, because it was, somehow, incredibly -- "Bucky!"

Strong arms clasped him on either side, and sure enough it was him. A face with wrinkles and gray but Bucky just the same, through and through. "Oh Jesus, you're hurt, Hydra--"

"It's ok," Steve said, and held him close, burrowed his nose against the warmth where his beard met his tac suit, and let relief course through his veins like a gentle salve. But it wasn't ok, was it? Steve pulled back, wrecked and searching. "No. Oh, Buck, no, you didn't take the shuttle, you stupid--"

Bucky's grip tightened on his shoulders and shook him once, twice, the gesture fond and frustrated as always. "I ought to sock you in the face," he said, pained. "You've got no right telling me that."

"You don't understand, it's my fault." He couldn’t feel his lips and Bucky was bundling his own parka around him.

"It's not your fault."

"Listen--"

"I got your message. I  _ know _ , Steve. I already knew." Bucky held his face, half-warming, half-comforting.

That stopped him short. "What?"

"I found you, after you OD'd. I covered it up. I didn't know how to help you, who to trust. I thought they'd send you up without me."

"What?" Steve repeated. A thunderclap. He'd taken the pills, gone to the radio tower. And then … and then … There was nothing. Had he meant to do it? It was lost to him now, like trying to see the mind of a stranger. But Bucky, he’d known from the start, all this time, as Steve had drifted away? He grappled with the idea. "And you--?"

Bucky's mouth tightened. "Got sent out, some bullshit Portland mission I should've begged off. Carter put you back on schedule. Few days later, tells me your TBI took a sudden turn for the worse."

"No," Steve whispered, flashes of memory catching fast. Long stretches of miserable highway broken only by the promise of an artificial respite. He shivered, the hooks of need wrenching his gut at the thought alone. It was so perfect and easy to float, his routine like a warm bath. Of  _ course _ he'd gone back for more.

"After that, yeah. Yeah, I let it go. I thought you'd try a different way, if I cut you off again. I was scared, Steve. And I'm as selfish as you are stubborn. Figured it might buy me time, try to fix..." Bucky trailed off with a rueful scoff. 

Steve wrenched away, the magnitude of it all coming to a head. "You should've left."

Bucky hauled him back. "I told you the same on the Raft. Remember what you said?"

"Not without you.” It wasn’t the same. Was it? “But, Buck--"

"Stop it. Just stop it," Bucky said. He took a shaky breath. "You know how many times I begged for the Chair because I wanted to forget? On bad days, I still think about it, those feelings. And that's just … It's human. It's okay to just be human, Steve."

"But I never wanted to forget  _ us _ ."

"I know. You never really do."

Steve let Bucky shoulder his weight, one step at a time towards the homestead. A snowmobile engine revved en route to meet them. MJ. He wanted to promise this time would be different, but he was terrified those might be words that held no weight, and Bucky deserved more than empty promises.

There was so much more he could say, two old idiots butting heads on a frozen wasteland and measuring their shame. For now, instead, he took his cue from the scavengers, and let the light of a happy reunion, however troubled underneath, shine on his soul and grow the ember there. The mending would be in the doing, one day at a time. He'd known weakness before. Could he return to it, survive with it? Steve had to believe so. Even when he had nothing … He ran his thumb along Bucky's cheekbone, his jawline, brushed back an escaped strand of gray hair.

"Say, didn't you use to be younger?"

Bucky grimaced. "Small price to pay for almost collapsing the universe."

"Collapsing the universe. Aren't we a pair. That doesn't sound like fixing things?"

"It's a long story."

"Got time."


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Certain junctures of our lives must always be difficult of recall to memory. Certain points, crises, certain feelings, joys, griefs, and amazements, when reviewed, must strike us as things wildered and whirling, dim as a wheel fast spun.”  
> \-- Charlotte Brontë, _Villette ___

Eventually, snow buried the Albany and Cleveland outposts, a piling upon of blizzards, and they vanished into the landscape as so many other abandoned buildings had. Their surplus stores emptied, garages dismantled by scavengers and the elements alike, until only the wind whistled low and fast over snow drifts tens of feet high.

In the remains of New York City the ice flow claimed another skyscraper and a former giant toppled.

Ghosts of old highways and rivers haunted the landscape, smooth veins of ice broken by avalanches and sunken overpasses.

And yet the southern sky brightened along the equator and stretched upwards as far as the former El Paso outpost. The sunlight, as if through fog in late mid-morning, rose on the old shuttle launch pad, long since dismantled for scrap parts. It stretched curious fingers across the West Texas snowfield and brushed the patched, domed ceiling of the observatory in the foothills of the Guadalupe Mountains. A few pale rays caught in the glass prism there and bounced down, fracturing and multiplying and strengthening until they hit the palm of a metal hand.

Bucky flexed his joints and watched the wide beam of sunlight play over them. Silt from the mountainside rubbed in the grooves. Should've worn a glove again. It rusted more easily these days. The screws inside him twinged when a storm was coming and he guessed a strong punch or too-heavy lift would throw something loose entirely. Old age forced gentleness.

"Carter tells me you're a free man."

Bucky looked up, catching Chavez's smile where she leaned against the greenhouse entrance. He called it the greenhouse but it was more like a pile of dirt with a lot of ambition.

“Wilson and Rambeau are relinking the satellite feeds. Figure I had a chance to catch you alone,” she continued. “So, how’s it feel?”

"It's strange," he admitted, struck again by how Chavez looked just the same as five years earlier. “I thought I'd be … I don't know. Takes some getting used to. How’s the kid? Dani?"

“Finding her way, just like we all are.”

Bucky nodded. “You’d have been right to file desertion.” 

“Oh, damn sure. I got a big DO NOT RECRUIT stamped on your file now.” She nodded to his arm. "You should let that android of yours do some maintenance." 

"I'm not gonna let BITS take apart my arm. We're already behind on orders."

Turned out bartering for mechanical services was a damn lucrative business. He'd seen all manner of jury-rigged vehicles and managed to fix most of them. Of course there was the occasional weapons request from some asshole thinking he'd fix up a fucking tank. But mostly it was honest work.

"How long was it, for you?" Bucky asked.

She quirked her lips. "Ship's log says about five weeks. Saw the old outpost is gone now. Good riddance."

Five weeks. A few years. Bucky paused before his next question. Chavez knew what he was weighing, because she waited patiently.

"What did you do to the stone? How did you stop it?"

She crossed her arms and considered him. "The man you spoke with, Stephen Strange. There's masters and, say, born naturals. It's why Fury recruited me. When you were in the stone, it showed you the branches, didn't it?"

"It was like I was in a river, swimming. I chose a way, but that was all."

"Imagine exploring all those other different ways. I used to, when I was younger and lost. Homeless."

"So why did you stop?"

"Because this was the only branch where I found her. You know how that is." She gazed past him. "The stone was lost to me after that. Of course it's like throwing a bottle into the ocean; the current always carries it back to shore."

Bucky watched her press her fingertips slightly against the center of her chest, where an amulet might've rested. He thought about that long-ago (or not-so-long-ago?) conversation with Strange and asked one more question:

"Do you know what happens in the future? How it ends?"

"If you knew, would it change anything?"

Bucky thought for a minute. "No. No, I guess not." He smiled to himself.

Chavez straightened, glancing at her transmitter device. "Duty calls. Think we could bribe your scavenger crew for some intel? We got fake burgers."

"They might like your fission reactor core better."

"That makes one of us. Stay out of trouble, Barnes."

It wasn't too much longer until he heard another pair of footsteps approaching, the gait slightly uneven, a bad knee. Bucky sat back on his heels and waited for Steve, who appeared in the doorway with a quizzical expression. The bareness of his chin and jaw was still startling from the morning's fresh shave, the first in years, exposing angles grown fuller and softer than they’d once been, changes that made Bucky ache with want.

"Chavez still here?"

"Just missed her."

"Huh." Steve ran a hand over his ruddy cheek, smearing some type of motor grease. His old sweater was dirtied from the garage where he'd been showing off his work on an old rig, rolled-up sleeves over well-muscled forearms and softly rounding in other places. His gray hair brushed back from his weather-beaten face, wrinkles permanently etched now, patterns Bucky could trace by heart. His love simmered deep and abiding, catching sharply in his chest when Steve looked at him a certain way in just the right light.

 _You look good, healthy_ , Sam had said to them when the ship landed. And that was fine. Sometimes you let friends believe what they needed to believe, so they could move on with a lighter burden. The mind was slow to heal. MJ liked to say it started with compassion, even for two old relics like themselves. Earth was the right place, Bucky thought. He'd always had a soft spot for scrappy fighters and it was on this stubborn rocky core, changed and haunted as it was, that he'd made and remade himself too.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Steve teased quietly, bemused.

"Dirty or clean?" he said, just to make him blush. It was always so easy, even after so long. Bucky straightened and joined him, catching the musky scent of Steve's worn trousers and boot oil and gasoline fumes. He ran his metal thumb along the beaten-tough skin below Steve's knuckles. "You ever wonder how this all ends?"

"Mm," Steve rumbled, warm and steady. He squinted up into the sunlight. “For us? Nah. Think I know."

***

"Such a fuckin' Brooklyn romantic, Jesus Christ, Rogers," Bucky guffawed into the East River breeze, and tugged down his ballcap in mock embarrassment. He looped his left arm around one of the Brooklyn Bridge walkway cables and grinned furtively to where Sam and Natasha lingered a few yards back. A gull swooped low to dance between the cables and below them the river glittered in midday sun so bright it hurt. Steve rested a hand on his warm skin. It was nice to be close. To set down for a little while the terrible miseries of the past. To be touched with such reverent love, here, at home.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, the pandemic-era fic has finally finished, over a year after I started outlining. This started off as a challenge to see if I could portray Steve and Bucky in an unlikeable way, where their own faults drove the plot instead of a traditional villain. Along the way this morphed into a meditation on time, memory, and forgiveness. My gratitude to Soundgarden's _Black Hole Sun_ for setting the mood, and to America and Monica for coming alive and bringing such rays of joy into my imagination this past year.
> 
> Select references for people who like references:
> 
> The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, by Andrew Solomon
> 
> "Just Memory: War and the Ethics of Remembrance," by Viet Thanh Nguyen
> 
> The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tales of Life on the Road, by Finn Murphy
> 
> I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia, by Daniel de Visé and Su Meck
> 
> How to Write Black Characters: An Incomplete Guide, distributed by Salt & Sage Books


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